Schubert Sinfonie Nr. 7 (Unvollendete) I Mahler Sinfonie Nr. 2, 1. Satz (Totenfeier) I Liszt Orpheus

Franz Schubert's B minor Symphony, composed in 1822, went down in music history as the "Unfinished". Why Schubert abandoned the work after only two completed movements remains a mystery to this day - but it is precisely this fragmentary nature that has given the work a unique place in the symphonic canon. The mysterious hovering of the beginning, the urge to tragedy and the lyrical moments of calm already deeply moved the audience at the posthumous premiere in Vienna in 1865 and made it clear that the two movements form a cohesive work of the highest expressivity. Like Schubert, Gustav Mahler also combined folk-song-like simplicity with the greatest symphonicism and intimate melancholy with expressive outbursts. Schubert's fragment finds a monumental continuation in his "Totenfeier", completed in 1888 and later the first movement of his "Auferstehungssinfonie". A powerful dirge rises out of the darkness, in which despair and hope meet irreconcilably. What Schubert breaks off, Mahler drives on with existential force. Franz Liszt's "Orpheus" finally opens up another sphere: here the music no longer fights, but harmonizes. Inspired by the mythical figure of the ancient singer, whose melody soothes death and transforms suffering into beauty, Liszt's symphonic poem, composed in 1854, unfolds a shimmering arc of sound full of tranquillity, beauty and transfiguration.

In this way, the three works also form an imagined completion of the "Unfinished": Schubert's work finds its dramatic continuation in Mahler's "Totenfeier" and its poetic completion in Liszt's "Orpheus" - music that transforms death, suffering and despair into consolation, transcendence and sound poetry.