hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt

Gustav Mahler composed his unfinished Symphony No. 10 at the end of his life, marked by physical and mental suffering. While Rebecca Saunders explores the limits of individual expression in her piece for piano and orchestra "To an Utterance," focusing on the solo piano with the fascinating pianist Tamara Stefanovich, the eight horns in Helmut Lachenmann's "My Melodies" form a homogenous ensemble of soloists whose sonic possibilities are fully exploited.


Rebecca Saunders's work repeatedly features the desperate and sometimes stifled attempt at expression and communication. This is also the case in the piano concerto "To an Utterance," written in 2020, in which the piano, as a disembodied subject, struggles for its language. The protagonist fights for her story in a manic monologue until the bitter end, before finally falling silent. Tamara Stefanovich, an exceptional pianist and expert on 20th and 21st century music, takes over the solo part.


Gustav Mahler died in May 1911 before he could complete his 10th Symphony. He left behind more or less finished sketches for all five movements of this last symphony – however, a full score exists only for the first movement, the "Adagio." The sketches for this last symphony were written during a time of deep personal and socio-political crisis. Musically, this first movement of the symphony, with its complex harmony, points beyond Mahler's late work into the modern era.


Impressed by the beauty of the horn octet during a rehearsal for his opera "The Little Match Girl," Helmut Lachenmann decided to write a work for this special orchestral ensemble with a solo ensemble of eight horns.

The compositional process was lengthy: the creation of this new opus magnum began with intensive rehearsals and experiments with the horn section of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, which premiered "My Melodies."


Rebecca Saunders (*1967)
To an utterance (2020)
for piano and orchestra


Gustav Mahler (1860–1911)
Adagio
1st movement from Symphony No. 10 (1910)


Helmut Lachenmann (*1935)
My Melodies (2016–23)
Music for 8 horns and orchestra



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