2022 Chiaroscuro Copy

Chamber Music
Contemporary
Classical

Various Artists

CHIAROSCURO – SHADOW AND LIGHT

PART 1: Shadow

These three powerful contemporary works by Americans Missy Mazzoli and Steve Reich and rising Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdóttir seek to capture some of the concerns and anxieties of our times.

Steve Reich’s foreboding, multilayered work WTC 9/11, created for 3 string quartets, responds to the human impact of that catastrophic event. It uses the recorded voices and speech rhythms from air-traffic controllers, radio broadcasts and interviews with witnesses to generate musical material.

Anna Thorvaldsdóttir’s music is inspired by nature’s fragility and power. Her strikingly unusual and beautiful music, written as an ecosystem of sounds, expresses the composer’s deep connection to environment.

Vespers for a New Dark Age is Missy Mazzoli’s secular response to liturgical tradition, inviting audiences to contemplate both the divine and existential despair by meditating on the ominous intersection of technology and humanity.

PART 2: LIGHT

Performing an expansive arc of works rich with optimism, emotion and hope, our stellar Festival 2022 chamber orchestra features many of Australia’s finest musicians. String players from the Acacia Quartet, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Fellowship 2022 cohort, and Sydney Symphony Orchestra are joined by two of Australia’s most brilliant soloists, Véronique Serret and Tamara-Anna Cislowska.

This penultimate set of your Festival weekend seeks to restore equilibrium and lift the spirit with Bach’s dynamic, unmistakable Brandenburg Concerto No.3 in G (1718), whose two fast movements drive the work forward with sheer ebullience.

Pēteris Vasks’ Lonely Angel (2006) was inspired by a vision: an angel hovering over the world ‘observing the state of the ravaged Earth with tears in his eyes, and yet an almost imperceptible, loving touch of his wings brings comfort and healing. This piece is a response to the pain.’ The sustained beauty of Véronique Serret’s solo violin is the voice of the lonely angel who watches untiringly over the world.

Henryk Górecki became a household name after his Symphony of Sorrowful Songs made him the highest-selling classical composer of modern times. Performed by Tamara-Anna Cislowska, Górecki’s Piano Concerto (1980) finds a more urgent sense of movement, echoing the rhythmic impulse of baroque dances.

In conclusion, Four Winds Festival proudly presents the Australian premiere of Grażyna Bacewicz’s Concerto for String Orchestra (1948), a stunning work composed by the Polish violinist in a post-war world still in shock, and desperately looking to the future.