Although the work was almost completed in the autumn of 2009, Lera Auerbach had to rewrite it in 2010 because her manuscript was burned when there was a fire in her apartment.
“The manuscript of the new work was gone. I tried to remember what I had written, but soon gave up any hopes to resurrect it, the creative impulse behind this work was gone, and without my manuscript to guide me back I lost the sense of what this work was to me. So I decided to start anew and to write a different piece altogether”, the composer said.

Lera Auerbach’s Symphony No. 1 was premiered in Düsseldorf on 19 November 2006 by the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker under the baton of John Fiore. The additional title “Chimera” and the mainly Latin-language movement titles indicate possible inspirations from the ancient world. Torsten Möller wrote in the programme book of the world premiere: “Since the composer renounces directing the reception of her works in a specific direction through commentaries, the listener must fall back on his own thinking, whereby the movement titles can serve as pointers. Perhaps one thus discovers the dreams of an ill person (Aegri somnial) in the ‘narrative cantilena’ of the first movement, or the development from dark to light (Post tenebras lux) in the brief, ever more condensed second movement? Or maybe one also discovers the famous garden landscapes of a Giovanni Francesco Barbieri in the fourth movement (Et in Arcadia Ego)?”

11 October 2014
Budapest
Palace of Arts, Béla Bartók National Concert Hall, 7:30 PM
Hungarian premieres: Lera Auerbach,
“Eterniday” for bass drum, celesta and strings
Symphony No. 1 “Chimera”
Cadenzas to Piano Concerto in D-minor, K. 466   
Lera Auerbach (piano)
Concerto Budapest
András Keller (direction)