In 2020, AMUZ will be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven. Thirteen international pianists will play all of his 32 piano sonatas in a single weekend.

Recital series 6
16.30 Olga Pashchenko
18.00 Abdel Rahman El Bacha

Gesualdo’s fourth collection of madrigals, published in Ferrara in 1596, shows how the composer experimented with dissonance in polyphony and what an excellent sense of textual expression and drama he had. His music is complex polyphony characterised by light, Italian charm veiled in melancholy. It was only in the 20th century that the expressiveness, tension and refined silence in Gesualdo’s madrigals began to meet with widespread appreciation. He was a source of inspiration for various composers in the second half of the 20th century, such as Igor Stravinsky.

Mozart’s Oboe Concerto in C major, KV 314 was only rediscovered in Salzburg in 1920. However the composition was known before then in the form of his Flute Concerto no. 2 in
D major. Research into his correspondence has revealed the link between the two pieces. Mozart wrote the oboe concerto in 1777 for Guiseppe Ferlendis, the oboist in Archbischop Colloredo’s court orchestra in Salzburg. Not much later, Mozart was commissioned by the Dutch doctor Ferdinand Dejean in Mannheim to compose three flute concertos and two flute quartets. Lacking the time to do so, Mozart transposed his oboe concerto one full tone higher to fulfil the commission. The Violin Concerto no. 1 in B flat major, KV 207 and Symphony no. 29 in A major, KV 201 you will hear at this concert also date from Mozart’s final years in Salzburg, during which he focused increasingly on instrumental compositions. These cheerful works illustrate his quirky genius, in a sparkling performance by our new artist in residence and her baroque ensemble Gli Incogniti.

The five musicians in the French ensemble L’Achéron and the soprano Deborah Cachet join forces to play cantatas written by Handel in his youth. He was about twenty years old when he arrived in Italy at the invitation of one of the de Medicis. He wrote his Figlio d’alte speranze in Venice. In Rome, he met various patrons such as the cardinals Ottoboni, Pamphilj and Ruspoli, for whom he wrote a good sixty cantatas. They occupy a space between chamber music and opera, allowing him to experiment with ingenious musical figures that he would later use in his operas as well.

Margret Köll and Luca Pianca based this concert on the tradition of the early virtuosi, with their unerring ability to adapt all kinds of music to the specific vocabulary of their instrument. They have selected masterpieces by Claudio Monteverdi, the herald of the Baroque, J.S. Bach, who brought the period to an inimitable close 150 years later, and Carlo Gesualdo, whose madrigals sought expression beyond the limitations and musical conventions of his time. In their versions for harp and lute, the musicians seek out the soul of the composers, and do an incomparable job of finding it.

Many composers have composed music to the biblical text of the Lamentations about the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC, including Orlandus Lassus. He expressed the drama of the fall of the city in the strictest motet style. His stylistic severity offers superior support to the poetic eloquence of the Lamentations. Allow Vox Luminis to sweep you up into a meditative tapestry of voices and enjoy a wonderful combination of frugality and expressiveness from days long gone.