Man in the Universe

Where does humankind stand in the universe? Five works each offer an answer. “In every fleeting vision I see worlds,” wrote the poet Konstantin Balmont. Sergei Prokofiev took the title of his Visions fugitives from that line: twenty miniatures, each a world of its own. György Ligeti drew a confident portrait of himself in Monument – Selbstportrait – Bewegung, his masterpiece for two pianos. Ellen Corver performs it with Antonii Baryshevskyi.

A delegation from the Davidsbündler Music Academy – teaching musicians and top talents – plays the sextet from Capriccio. In Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, two lovers walk through a moonlit wood. She confesses that she is carrying another man’s child. He forgives her. “See how brightly the universe gleams!” he exclaims in the poem that inspired the work.

The evening ends with De Staat by Louis Andriessen. Plato saw the ideal state as a reflection of the heavenly order and feared that music could undermine it. “If only that were true,” sighed Andriessen. In the version for two pianos, you hear the raw power of this Dutch masterpiece with razor-sharp clarity.