Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini has been invited by the Bremer Philharmoniker to write a work for their 200th anniversary. It addresses the earthly in the sense of an approach to human life here.

With a history spanning 200 years, the Bremer Philharmoniker is one of the longest-established orchestras in Germany, rich in tradition. This will be celebrated in a major anniversary concert at the beginning of November 2025 in Bremen, featuring works by Brahms, Beethoven and the world premiere of Scartazzini’s new work “Earth”. The piece was composed for the orchestra of the Hanseatic city and its General Music Director Marko Letonja as a musical approach to the earthly, as a homage to the human experiences we live through.

“High, fragile sounds light up and fade away. But gradually they win through and form a tonal space which increasingly consolidates downwards. A current starts up, the sounds increase in power and are pulled by the depths as if by a magnet”, is how the composer describes his work. “My new orchestral work ‘Earth’ begins with this image of gravity.

The earthly is the theme of this composition. But not in the sense of physics, geology and nature alone – although these are discernible as musical figures – but even more central in the dimension of fundamental human experiences on earth, as a musical approach to what our life here constitutes.
And so the heavy, lava-like tonal flow of low brass and strings gradually transforms into a ritual dance, which increasingly tips over into aggressive, war-like sounds. Then the music calms, and like rock deposits, the harmonic layers of the previous sections appear in a great chord.

The ensuing development follows a refinement: together with delicate, percussive noises, the flutes articulate speech-like sounds into the tube of the instrument, and out of the tender sound of the strings emerges a hummed sound from the orchestra as a symbol of human communication. In the last section the strings lead back in a tender gesture to the beginning of the composition and beyond. A last chord fills the space – clear, glassy and totally unearthly.”    

Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini/Tessa Singer
(from [t]akte 2/2025)
(translation: Elizabeth Robinson)