Zermatt Festival Orchestra / Scharoun Ensemble Berlin
David Philip Hefti, Leitung

Konzertaufnahme: 15. September 2023, Pfarrkirche Sankt-Mauritius, Zermatt (Uraufführung im Rahmen des Zermatt Festival)
Musikregie: Marcel Babazadeh

My octet "Des Zaubers Spuren" (“Traces of Magic”) was composed in 2023 to a commission from the Zermatt Music Festival & Academy on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, to whom this work is also dedicated. The world première will be given by the dedicatees on 15 September 2023 at the Zermatt Music Festival; the German première will then take place on 27 September 2023 at the Scharoun Ensemble’s anniversary concert in the Philharmonic Hall in Berlin.
"Traces of Magic" is a homage to the music of Franz Schubert, which alongside its transparency and structural clarity also reveals a profundity that touches me directly. In "Traces of Magic", I have chosen the same instrumental combination as Schubert in his famous
Octet, while my music also “leans on” that of his masterpiece, albeit mostly inaudibly, creating a network of relationships that is permanently present in the background. "Traces of Magic" lends itself to being performed as a prelude to Schubert’s Octet, given that it relates to it in its atmosphere, its harmonies, its motives and its structure. But the “inaudibility” of its Schubertian echoes means that this piece can also be performed as an independent octet, quite apart from the context of Schubert’s work.
David Philip Hefti