:format(webp))
Performers
- Abel Hox piano
- Shannon Lee violin
- Antonii Baryshevskyi piano
- Ellen Corver piano
Programme
- Alexander ScriabinSixth Sonata, Op. 62 (1911) — for piano
- Eugène YsaÿeSecond Sonata in A minor, Op. 27 No. 2 (1923) — for solo violin
- Maxim ShalyginAngel (2020) — for violin and piano
- Kaya
- Heinrich Ignaz Franz BiberPassacaglia ‘The Guardian Angel’ from the Rosary Sonatas (c. 1676) — for solo violin
- Interval
- Olivier MessiaenVisions de l’Amen (1943) — for two pianos
About this concert
Ecstatic splendour of sound
Angels are seen as messengers between heaven and earth. In this concert they appear in many guises: as fallen angels who bring the light, as guardian angels and as angels rejoicing.
The evening begins in darkness with the Sixth Sonata by Alexander Scriabin, played by Abel Hox. Scriabin found this music so ominous that he never performed it in public himself. Violinist Shannon Lee plays the spellbinding Second Sonata by Eugène Ysaÿe, in which the Dies irae keeps surfacing: the Gregorian chant about the Day of Judgement.
The light breaks through in Angel by Maxim Shalygin and in the Passacaglia with which Heinrich Biber concluded his Rosary Sonatas around 1676. Above the music is an engraving: a guardian angel takes a child by the hand.
After the interval, Ellen Corver and Antonii Baryshevskyi play Visions de l’Amen by Olivier Messiaen. In seven Amens the whole of creation passes by: stars and planets, angels, saints and birds, desire and the Last Judgement. With ecstatic splendour of sound, Messiaen conjures it all from the two grand pianos.