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Performers
- Animato Kwartet
- Inga Våga Gaustad violin
- Tim Brackman violin
- Elisa Karen Tavenier viola
- Pieter de Koe cello
- Floor le Coultre violin and viola
- Ekaterina Levental mezzo-soprano
- Rik Kuppen piano
- Jelmer de Moed clarinet and bass clarinet
- Felicia van den End flute and piccolo
Programme
- Joseph HaydnString Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 76 No. 4 ‘Sunrise’ (1797)
- Grażyna BacewiczWitraż (Stained Glass Window, 1932) — for violin and piano
- Kołysanka (Lullaby, 1952) — for violin and piano
- Ottorino RespighiIl tramonto (The Sunset, 1914) — for mezzo-soprano and string quartet, to a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Interval
- Arnold SchoenbergPierrot lunaire, Op. 21 (1912) — for speaking voice, flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, violin/viola, cello and piano
About this concert
‘Drinking the moonlight like wine’
A full day and night in music, from the first light of dawn to the dead of night. The Animato Quartet opens the festival with the Sunrise Quartet by Joseph Haydn: above a softly sustained chord, the first violin climbs slowly upwards, like the sun rising over the horizon.
Inga Våga Gaustad and Rik Kuppen let the light fall through coloured glass in Witraż (Stained Glass Window) by Grażyna Bacewicz. Her Kołysanka is a lullaby for nightfall. In Il tramonto by Ottorino Respighi, mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Levental sings the sun down, accompanied by string quartet: two lovers watch the sun go down; the next morning she finds him lifeless beside her. An opera in miniature.
In Pierrot lunaire, written in 1912, Arnold Schoenberg set poems by Albert Giraud to music: a moonstruck clown drinks the moonlight like wine and sails home on a moonbeam. The voice hovers between singing and speaking, while the five musicians switch deftly between eight instruments. A classic that never ceases to fascinate. Ekaterina Levental has shone at Classical NOW! many times before, and Pierrot lunaire is one of her signature pieces.