ON THE NIGHT PLAIN

Details: Category: ON THE NIGHT PLAIN

Unorthodox canon of the Stringquartet

Premiere January 31, 2020, Muziekgebouw aan het IJ, Amsterdam

Each festival edition features a concert on the Friday evening that breaks with all conventions: a staged, spectacularly unique event of unprecedented length that provides the string quartet a new canvas to play with. Eight works for string quartet – each more unorthodox than the other – with Different Trains and Cadenza on the Night Plain as the programme’s two main focal points. In the stage direction by Annechien Koerselman the audience experiences - both aurally and visually - a musical journey through a dangerous world, which transforms even into a completely desolate state. Yet at a given time nature fights back and eventually wins. In part 1 of this four-hour musicaltheatrical evening the audience is witnessing a world in turmoil. In part 2 one even has landed in an apocalyptic era, in which only glimmers some hope at the time of Gorecki's music sounds. Part 3 presents actually what happens after each Apocalypse: slowly life and color are brought back in the deserted existence. In part 4, finally the sky opens up, supported by the sometimes jazzy country-style of Riley, as if a lot of beautiful things are germinated and take off.

Embark on a four-hour journey exploring humanity and human endeavour – destruction, beauty, emotion and their natural limits. The journey takes in five substantial but highly unusual works of the string quartet canon: Fratres by Arvo Pärt, Different Trains by Steve Reich, Górecki’s second stringquartet, Structures for String Quartet by Morton Feldman and Cadenza on the Night Plain by Terry Riley.

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