Our January 24th concert at the Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum Library Library is an evening of chamber works curated by our violinist, Eric Rynes. Eric has been a violinist in the ensemble since our very first concert 10 years ago! Here’s what he has to say about how he came up with this kaleidoscopic program:
“The centerpiece of the evening is Arcipelago Möbius by the Italian composer Ivan Fedele, whose works are virtually unknown here; I was riveted when I saw his music performed in Europe, and we’re so excited to bring this piece to a Seattle audience! The piece was inspired by the geometric Möbius strip, so all the musical motives are played forwards and backwards, some parts “above” and the others “below” and later flip over. While we progress through it, Fedele also asks us to evoke traces of lightning, a volcanic eruption, and in a particularly gorgeous and soothing section, a rainbow.
After the words “inside-out” came to me while thinking about the Möbius strip, I looked for musically complementary pieces that tie in with these words in some way. For the opening neoclassical aperitif, Court Studies from The Tempest, Thomas Adès arranged fragments featuring minor characters in his opera The Tempest; it’s “inside-out” because it’s out of sequence of the opera, ending with “The King’s Grief” from Act 2, despite the king in Act 3 being happily reunited with the son he thought had died. Tristan Murail’s meditative Stalag VIIIa surges three times with quotes from the Quartet for the End of Time, which was composed inside the WWII camp by Olivier Messiaen who, like the Quartet itself, eventually got outside and became hugely influential.
Anthony Cheung‘s Elective Memory sounds like hazy recollections of Beethoven’s op. 96 violin & piano sonata. It builds to high drama and a mischievous scherzo before concluding with a twinkling nocturne that evokes—blink and you’ll miss it—a shooting star at the end. Alfred Schnittke‘s Hymn II conjures a monumental edifice that then seems to focus on a lone soul inside it, maybe at first questioning, then pleading with, but ultimately praising, a higher power. Its ending has kinship with the “rainbow” section near the end of the Fedele, which completes a beautiful cycle for the concert.”
We can’t wait to see you there!
GET CONCERT INFORMATION AND TICKETS HERE
Seattle Modern Orchestra is fiscally sponsored by Shunpike