The Sun and the Moon

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. Haydn wrote it in 1797, at the height of his fame. Once the sun is up, the quartet sparkles with his wit and zest for life.

Inga Våga Gaustad and Rik Kuppen let the light fall through coloured glass in Witraż (Stained Glass Window) by Grażyna Bacewicz. The Polish composer was a gifted violinist herself and wrote beautifully for her own instrument. Her Kołysanka is a lullaby for nightfall.

In Il tramonto (The Sunset), mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Levental sings the sun down, accompanied by string quartet. Ottorino Respighi set a poem by the English Romantic Percy Bysshe Shelley: two lovers watch the sun go down; the next morning she finds him lifeless beside her. An opera in miniature.

After the interval, the moon takes over. In Pierrot lunaire, written in 1912, Arnold Schoenberg set three times seven poems by the Belgian poet Albert Giraud, in the German translation by Otto Erich Hartleben. A moonstruck clown drinks the moonlight like wine, tries to rub a white spot of moonlight off his black jacket and finally 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.