Chamberfest Concert One

‘An evocative plainchant of Hildegard von Bingen begins each half of this journey through a millennium of creation stories. Fauré’s late song cycle, La Chanson d’Eve (The Song of Eve) tells the genesis story through the eyes of Eve. We hear a little-known Mozartian gem about belief and conviction which you’re unlikely to have heard, but imagine if the Queen of the Night and Sarastro had couple’s therapy and worked it out.

After interval, a ghostly a cappella verse brings us close to Haydn’s Creation, with a ninety-second excerpt from Brett Dean’s evolution cantata In This Brief Moment in response. Sibelius gives us a rousing Finnish fairytale about a mermaid in the primordial soup in Luonnotar, before the concert finishes with two stunning songs of piano virtuoso Nikolai Medtner.

The brilliant Jonathan Ware dreamed up this program during lockdown and we've developed it through performances at the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin and London’s Wigmore Hall. With candlelight, music boxes and displaced voices, it’s an epic concert of origin stories, with the human voice threaded through time.'

Inspiration: Creation stories. Cycles of life. Music as marker of time and history, and teacher of cultural context.
Recognise: The sound worlds of Mozart and Fauré.
Discover: The piano virtuosity of Nikolai Medtner, and how his songs transport you to heaven.

– Siobhan Stagg

Artists
Siobhan Stagg | Soprano
Jonathan Ware | Piano

Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179)
O vis eternitatis

Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924)
La Chanson d'Ève, Op. 95

I. Paradis
II. Prima verba
III. Roses ardentes
IV. Comme dieu rayonne
V. L’aube blanche
VI. Eau vivante
VII. Veilles-tu, ma senteur de soleil?
VIII. Dans un parfum de roses blanches
IX. Crépuscule
X. O mort, poussière d'étoiles

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)
Die ihr des unermesslichen Weltalls Schöpfer ehrt, K. 619

INTERVAL

Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179)
O quam mirabilis est

Joseph Haydn (1732–1809)
The Creation, Hob. XXI:2

VIII. Nun beut die Flur das frische Grün

Brett Dean (b. 1961)
Doch war noch alles nicht vollbracht (… after Haydn…)
from In This Brief Moment

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957)
Luonnotar, Op. 70

Nicolai Medtner (1880–1951)
Der Engel, Op. 1 bis
Praeludium, Op. 46, No. 1