8:00PM CONCERT
7:15PM PRE-CONCERT MUSICAL INSIGHTS WITH ALEXINA LOUIE & GUESTS

Created at a turning point in the Reich’s career, his Variations introduced new harmonic, formal and timbral materials with constant yet slow recurrence of materials from variation to variation- resulting in a sound quite different from music in the composer’s early output.

Gubaidulina’s Fachwerk, teetering on a razor’s edge between beauty and terror, employs the sound world of the bayan (accordion) in blisteringly inventive ways.

Ma’s new work, commissioned as part of its Esprit’s strategy of engaging young composers to create a new work in each of three consecutive years, will provide one of the concerts greatest thrills.

Bee mortality has become a dramatic loss ecologically and also an acoustic loss. Zuraj addresses bumblebee endangerment by reflecting their sounds with agile strings, buzzing brass mouthpieces and various suitable percussion instruments and also references a familiar musical predecessor – Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee”.

featuring

Alex Pauk Conductor
Michael Bridge Accordion

PROGRAMME

Steve Reich
Variations for Winds, Strings & Keyboards (1979)

Sofia Gubaidulina
Fachwerk (2009)

Nicholas Ma
New Work* (2027)

Vito Žuraj
Api-danza macabra (2021)

 
*WORLD PREMIERE, COMMISSIONED BY ESPRIT ORCHESTRA