Trento Symphonia

Overview

It is sunset in a mountain landscape. An orchestra and a choir, along with a large group of adolescents who act as "living-music-stands", are filmed as they play the first part of Mahler’s 8th Symphony. The musicians gradually begin to move in a precise choreography, led by their living-music-stands. As these movements are executed, disparate groups of musicians, singers, and living-music-stands begin to disappear along with the sounds that they emit. The music progressively becomes a sound object captured in the course of its own erosion, which corresponds to the slow dissolution of the landscape’s visibility due to the setting sun. Ultimately, the music as a sound object and the landscape as a visual object become identical, all while being completely transformed in regard to the starting configuration. Thus, in TRENTO SYMPHONIA, the landscape becomes a point of convergence between contemplation, correspondence, and imagination.