Mahler
Carnelli, OCM

Orchestra da Camera di Mantova

Alessandro Maria Carnelli, conductor

G. Mahler (1860-1911)

Symphony No. 1 in D major (version for ensemble by K. Simon, revised by A. M. Carnelli)

60’ | Ticket 15 €

It is the Orchestra da Camera di Mantova that brings to Piazza Santa Barbara—the festival’s main venue—one of the most visionary symphonic works in the entire Romantic tradition, under the direction of Alessandro Maria Carnelli, also a musicologist and public educator. Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D major, presented here in K. Simon’s chamber ensemble transcription—revised by Carnelli himself—reveals all its expressive force in a rare, intimate, and finely detailed setting.

Composed between 1884 and 1888, the symphony was met with bewilderment at its Budapest premiere in 1889: audiences were disoriented by the third movement, a funeral march built on the famous nursery rhyme “Frère Jacques” (known in Italian as “Fra Martino campanaro”) in a minor key—an irony that is sharp, almost surreal. Mahler himself, inspired by Jean Paul’s novel of the same name in which a solitary and rebellious hero struggles against the world, described it as a “symphonic poem” known as “The Titan.” From the nature calls that permeate the first movement—reflected in Naturlaut, one of the twelve Trame of this edition—to the overwhelming finale, the music unfolds with extraordinary narrative power.

Text by Federica Mastantuono