Bolzano Festival Bozen 2026 - Chamber Music

As part of the Bolzano Festival Bozen, ensembles of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester present their traditional chamber music concert with an eclectic programme centred on the figures of Bach and Busoni.

The line-up shifts throughout the concert, ranging from solo and four-hand piano to harp duo, piano quartet and wind quintet. A curious detail: Busoni's music is performed at the very Palazzo Mercantile where, in 1879, the composer himself – barely out of childhood – gave two concerts that delighted the Bolzano public.

The programme also includes works that echo the orchestra's symphonic repertoire: the third movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 7 in Alfredo Casella's transcription, and Bartók's Romanian Folk Dances. The Bach Chorale Prelude in György Kurtág's arrangement pays tribute to the latter composer in the centenary year of his birth.

Programme:

Johann Sebastian Bach – Ferruccio Busoni: Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 645

Gustav Mahler – Piano Quartet in A minor

Johann Sebastian Bach – Ferruccio Busoni: Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639

César Franck – Prelude, Fugue and Variation, op. 18

Ferruccio Busoni – Elegy for clarinet and piano, BV 286

Gustav Mahler – Alfredo Casella: Symphony No. 7, III. Scherzo

Johann Sebastian Bach – György Kurtág: Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, BWV 106

Ferruccio Busoni – Albumblatt, BV 272

Béla Bartók – Romanian Folk Dances