PROGRAM
Guillaume Dufay: Flos Florum (Flower of flowers)
Einari Rautavaara: from Cantus Arcticus (concerto for birds and orchestra)
Olav Anton Thommessen: Corellimaskin
Giacinto Scelsi: Natura Renovatur
Ludwig van Beethoven: from string quartet nr. 15: 3. mv. (Heiliger Dankgesang eines genesenen an die Gottheit, in der Lydischen Tonart)
The opening concert for the 5th season of the Concert Series NÅ has been titled from the work of the same name by Scelsi: Natura Renovatur. The program has been put together by the ensemble's violinist Maria Eikefet, and several of the selected works can be associated precisely with nature, and how we relate to it:
We start in the Renaissance with Guillaume Dufay, and his Flos Florum:
Flower of flowers, fount of gardens, queen of the heavens,
hope of pardon, light of joy, remedy of sorrows.
fresh branch and seemly virgin, model of goodness:
spare the guilty and bring them a reward in the peace of the righteous,
feed your own, succour your own, have mercy upon your own.
Then you will hear excerpts from Finnish Einari Rautavaara's Cantus Arcticus, in which a sound recording of an arctic lark turns the bird into a kind of soloist with the orchestra.
Olav Anton Thommessen celebrated his 75th anniversary last year. He has been a prominent figure in Norwegian music life for many of these years, both through an impressive production of musical works, but also through a number of prestigious positions, engagements and awards. At the concert, we play his Corelli machine from 2002. Here, Thommesen has taken the Italian master Arcangelo Corelli's Concerto Grosso No. 7 from Opus 6 as his starting point. The composer himself says:
“Saying Corelli back then was like saying Ferrari today. He was a stylist"
Thommessen brings this 300-year-old music into our time by expanding and expanding with newly added articulation, gestures and colours.
"Corelli should not only be played, you also have to understand what it was he did. Sonically, it is more about chords, sequences and rhythm than about melodies. This is also how it is in my machine”
Olav A. Thommessen
After Thommessen's machine music, which can evoke associations with the industrial revolution and its influence on nature throughout our time, we then hear the title piece for the concert, Italian Giacinto Scelsi's Natura Renovatur. Ensemble Allegria became acquainted with this work when we played it at the Henie-Onstad Art Center during the Ultima Festival in 2011. Then Dagbladet's Ståle Wikshåland wrote:
"Allegria's program featured Scelsi and Xenakis, music that most of all has the character of organized sound, often chaotic or very quiet. (…) The young musicians played this concentrated and beautifully, so that the whole sounded like the sound of nature with an excess, as, for example, Akerselva's rapids roar nowadays, with high water flow."
The concert ends with a real Beethoven highlight: the 3rd movement from String Quartet No. 15 in A minor. This movement has been given the title "Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der Lydischen Tonart", and was written shortly after Beethoven had been seriously ill for a long time. It was simply not certain that he was going to survive the disease, so finally actually getting well inspired him to write this infinitely beautiful song of thanks to higher powers after being given the gift of life.
Perhaps sometime in the future - long after the age of humans - there will be a turning point for nature, where it will once again take over the world: a Natura Renovation.