The only surviving piece of chamber music without voice composed by Mahler is an early work of him, the Piano Quartet-Movement in A minor, the intended first movement of a piano quartet that was apparently never completed. It is lesser known that the surviving manuscript includes also 27 bars of a Scherzo for piano quartet written in G minor. The existence of this sketch has resulted in attempts to complete the quartet by a number of composers. among them in 1988 Alfred Schnittke who wrote a completion of this movement; he also used the fragment in the second movement of his Concerto Grosso No. 4/Symphony No. 5.

György Fazekas, artistic director of the Sectio Aurea Ensemble (a group established in 2010 with the aim to perform pieces of music literature which went undeservedly forgotten or were declared as lost), in co-operation with Budapest Music Center commissioned five young Hungarian composers in 2014, to play with the idea how Mahler would have continued the 27 bars or how these bars would develop in a 21st century environment. The diversity of the results is quite exciting, some followed Mahler’s path, others used the support of literature, new instrumentation, the means of improvisation or even completed the 27 bars to an entirely new piece.