Five works. One string orchestra. A journey from darkness into light.
Some music seems to stop time.
A bell slowly tolls for a lost friend in Arvo Pärt’s Cantus. Elena Kats-Chernin conjures a strange, shimmering world; Ravel dances past in a flash of impossible lightness; and Max Richter’s On the Nature of Daylight unfolds with devastating simplicity.
Without winds, brass or percussion, a string orchestra can feel startlingly intimate—as though the distance between player and listener has disappeared. Across this program, sound seems almost physical: it glows, flickers, hovers and fades. These are pieces less concerned with spectacle than with what happens when we become very quiet and listen closely.
And then comes nightfall. Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night begins in darkness and ends somewhere entirely different—a journey through fear, confession, forgiveness and, finally, light.
Five works for strings; five ways of transforming a moment into something that lingers long after the final note.
PROGRAM
Arvo Pärt — Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten
Elena Kats-Chernin — Moon Feather Magic
Maurice Ravel — String Quartet in F major: II. Assez vif – très rythmé
Max Richter — On the Nature of Daylight
— Intermission —
Arnold Schoenberg — Transfigured Night, Op. 4