Unfeeling was written in response to a commission for an homage to Gustav Mahler. It is an inward-looking meditation on withdrawal and isolation, deeply indebted to his spirit

References to Mahlerian sonorities abound, in a deliberately restrained, sparsely-orchestrated, Fin-de-Siècle atmosphere. A long melody, led by the English Horn, slowly coalesces, smeared with heterphonic doublings and intercut by an insistent harmonium and static noises. Once-vivid sounds are deprived of their vitality, muffled by a wide variety of mutes, providing a strained and distant counterpoint.

The music reaches for those transcendent moments — the coda of Ich bin der Welt Abhanden Gekommen, the last bars of Lieder Eines fahrenden Gesellen, the ending of Das Lied von der Erde — but that kind of climax remains elusive. We are grounded in the flat and muddled territory of rumination, unable to muster the strength to break through.

After a while, a second voice emerges: raspy, guttural, full of stutters and slides — a mutually incomprehensible language that fails to communicate or redirect the flow.

Unfeeling was commissioned by Klangforum Wien and premiered on June 29, 2022 at the Konzerthaus in Vienna with Bas Wiegers conducting.