Ein' feste Burg, Orchestral arrangement of BWV 302
Alex Nante was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on April 5, 1992, and lives in Paris. He composed his arrangement Ein’ feste Burg on a commission from the Dresden Philharmonic at Kent Nagano’s request. Nagano led the ensemble in the world premiere on October 26, 2025, at Dresden’s Kulturpalast. The score is dedicated to Kent Nagano and the Dresden Philharmonic. These are the American premiere performances of the piece and the first Boston Symphony Orchestra performances of Nante’s music.
The score of Ein’ feste Burg calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, tuba, percussion (suspended cymbal, bass drum), harp, and strings (first and second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses).
The hymn “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” is one of the best-known hymns of the Protestant tradition, the branch of Christianity that emerged from the 16th-century Reformation. Usually translated in English as “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” the hymn was composed around 1527-1529 by the theologian and Protestant reformer Martin Luther. Luther wrote or adapted about three dozen hymns for German-language congregations. Others of his well-known hymns include “Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her,” “Christ lag in Todesbanden,” and “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland.” These Lutheran hymns quickly became part of the foundation for Lutheran worship, many of them providing the basis for cantatas and chorales by J.S. Bach and his contemporary Georg Philipp Telemann, among others. In using these familiar hymns, these composers provided familiar signposts for the audiences of their otherwise newly composed works.
Bach’s chorale harmonization, BWV 302, the basis of Alex Nante’s piece, is one of several treatments of Luther’s hymn. These also include several settings within his Cantata No. 80. The original context for the BWV 302 chorale is lost, though some scholars speculate it was originally composed as part of a larger piece. From Bach’s example, many later composers have also used Luther’s hymns as the basis for their own works, among the most prominent of which is Felix Mendelssohn’s use of “Ein’ feste Burg” in his Reformation Symphony. It was for a concert including that work that Kent Nagano requested Nante’s Ein’ feste Burg.
Ein’ feste Burg is among the latest of Alex Nante’s collaborations with Nagano, who previously conducted the premieres of Nante’s O nata lux with Orchestra Haydn di Bolzano e Trento and his Symphony No. 3 for soprano, baritone, chorus, organ, and orchestra with the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg at the Elbphilharmonie, commissioned to mark Nagano’s last concert as Hamburg’s general music director.
A composer, pianist, and guitarist, Alex Nante studied formally at the National University of the Arts in Argentina, Université Paris 8, the Reims Conservatoire, the Paris Conservatoire, and King’s College London, working with such teachers as George Benjamin and Peter Eötvös. Since he first gained recognition in his late teens, his music has been performed internationally. He has received commissions from such groups as Ensemble Musikfabrik, Orquesta Filarmónica de Buenos Aires, Orchestre National de Lille, where he served as composer in residence, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. On October 18, 2026, Nagano led the premiere of Nante’s Vater unser with the Berkeley Symphony.
Of his music, Nante has said, “Art must…reflect our entire experience as human beings—our daily lives, our friendships, our various relationships, our dreams….” His catalog features many works reflecting spiritual or metaphysical preoccupations as well as music that engages with artists of the past, for example in a project that interweaves his Arianna with music of the Baroque composer Pietro Locatelli. His large catalog includes concertos for flute, violin, soprano saxophone, percussion, and several for piano; three symphonies and several other orchestral works; and music for chorus, chamber ensemble, and solo instruments.
The hymn tune “Ein’ feste Burg” has a presence virtually throughout Nante’s piece. The more subdued chorale “So gehst du nun, mein Jesu, hin,” which shares the basic rhythmic framework of “Ein’ feste Burg,” introduces harmonic ambiguity, which along with his imaginative orchestration creates a new expressive dimension for this familiar music.
The composer’s comments on his piece are below.
Robert Kirzinger
Composer and writer Robert Kirzinger is the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Director of Program Publications.
Alex Nante on his Ein’ feste Burg:
As my teacher Marcel Pérès points out, memory is not confined to the past, but is a living entity which defines our present and configures our future.
All of my compositions are, to a larger extent, connected to musical memory—a dialogue with this living entity. I have worked previously with works by composers of the past, such as Pietro Antonio Locatelli, Antonio Vivaldi, and even Johann Sebastian Bach. In all of these works the musical material of the composers was used as a point of departure which led to imaginary dialogues with their languages. For this composition in particular, I was asked by Kent Nagano to preserve the original chorale of BWV 302 throughout, in the manner of [the conductor] Leopold Stokowski’s arrangement of the same work. This was a significant challenge, since my natural reflex as a composer would be to deviate and expand to other musical territories. At the same time, the idea was not simply to write an orchestration of the chorale. The process of composition of this work was rather a constant remembrance and reworking of the original text, as a contemplative exercise. This meditative, almost ascetic approach is perceived at the very beginning, where Bach’s chorale is transposed to an extreme high tessitura, in a very slow tempo and pianissimo. Later on, after the chorale is presented in a traditional manner, some slight deviations do occur. In some passages, only one or two voices of the original chorale are present, while new counterpoints are added, preserving, to a large extent, Bach’s style. At the end, the energetic “Maestoso” with the full orchestra, leads to a coda ad libitum, where a new chorale appears: BWV 500a. The introverted, quiet and sorrowful atmosphere which sets Friedrich Nachtenhöfer’s text
So gehst du nun, mein Jesu, hin,
den Tod für mich zu leiden…
[So now you go there, Jesus, to suffer death in my stead…]
marks a deep contrast to the “victorious” and extroverted “Ein’ feste Burg.” As a Christian myself, I felt the need to present musically both aspects—the suffering and the glory of Christ—since one cannot exist without the other.