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Programme notes<br />
Masterwork of Rachmaninov<br />
This concert concludes with a piece that<br />
augments and amalgamates those three<br />
ways of looking into the beyond—Bach’s<br />
profound all-acceptance, the dreamy<br />
clairvoyance of Tavener, and the heartbreaking<br />
human desperation of Janáček.<br />
There is a magnetic inscrutability about<br />
the majestic and formally brilliant final<br />
masterwork of Rachmaninov, the Symphonic<br />
Dances. The simple name and strong,<br />
clear structure serve only to safeguard<br />
something truly indescribable, almost<br />
alien—a chthonic mass of dark, potent, and<br />
dangerous material. It’s a labyrinth where,<br />
instead of the Minotaur, one might face<br />
Medusa; a Pandora’s Box full of prophecies<br />
in an unknown, perhaps yet non-existent<br />
language. The multiple layers, references,<br />
and conundrums in this piece are wrought<br />
so tightly that the tension is unbearable;<br />
there is an alchemical transformation<br />
taking place within that seems to bring it<br />
to the verge of the archetypical miracle of<br />
art: waves on a canvas flooding the room;<br />
a statue walking off its pedestal; sounds<br />
materializing, incarnating, becoming a new,<br />
yet undiscovered reality.<br />
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