Concert at Temppeliaukio Church on October 1st 2021. Buy tickets here.
Music has always been a medium to express, question, and transcend the human condition. In this world more and more divided and where art is put last in the priorities, our human responsibility to keep listening to each other and to connect goes through a difficult test... From the work songs and the revolution songs, to the songs for peace, the music never stopped giving hope, strength, and courage to people.
This concert is an invitation to explore the links between folk songs, arias, and lieder through the prism of our own instruments being -by nature- the continuation of our voices...
Program
Komitas/Sergei Aslamazyan: Miniatures
Franz Schubert: String Quintet in C major (D. 956, Op. posth. 163)
Komitas/Sergei Aslamazyan: Miniatures
Rustic, naive, and ritual songs, ballads... Komitas' Miniatures arranged by the cellist Aslamazyan narrate the mountains of Armenia, the trees, the birds, and the sun of the Caucasus region.
The tones of the quartet combine wonderfully to recreate the dance of the red scarf, its harmonies conjuring up Nazan's dash to his friend in the mountains of Armenia, its timbres at times evoking the nostalgic singing of the duduk, or the deep voice of an Armenian man singing for his love.
Franz Schubert: String Quintet in C major (D. 956, Op. posth. 163)
It was in the genre of the Lied that Schubert made his most indelible mark, but this genre influenced all his music. Written in C Major, this quintet expresses at the same time pure innocence, joy in the first movement, exuberance in the fourth, linked together by a sublime plaintive aria in the second movement.
During the whole piece, we are immersed in his melodies; the different instruments singing a song oscillating between life and death.