Concert Two | Chalk and Soot

The 1908 premiere of Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet, Op. 10 drew riotous behaviour from a deeply divided fin-de-siècle Viennese audience – on the one side, devoted followers of the forward-looking composer and on the other, those who considered his works cacophonous and offensive. Indeed, the quartet’s last movement figurations, disorienting and weightless, make us believe that we breathe ‘…the air of another planet.’ (Note: no riots this time, please!)

This luminous and highly important work was nevertheless performed many times during Schoenberg’s lifetime. In the audience for the German premiere in 1911 was the Russian-born expressionist Wassily Kandinsky. Transformed by the experience, Kandinsky’s art took a forward bound towards abstraction, seemingly emboldened by Schoenberg’s journey into atonality. A friendship evolved between these kindred spirits that was to last a quarter century, and Schoenberg was to become associated with the group of artists surrounding Kandinsky known as Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider – our namesake!).

To honour these connections, we present Chalk and Soot, an extended song cycle by our own Colin Jacobsen that sets the absurd, colourful, figurative, and pastoral scenes of Kandinsky’s proto-Dadaist poetry from 1912 in an eclectic manner, moving seamlessly between the theatrical, profound, and surreal. We also offer selected works from our own Brooklyn Rider Almanac commissioning project. These particular short pieces are all grounded by a visual sense, inspired by the beauty of UKARIA and the connection between music and the visual arts which is so embodied here.

Clarice Assad’s colourful Cinematheque is a soundtrack to a movie that doesn’t exist. Mallacoota native Padma Newsome contributed a work inspired by the legendary work of the Arrernte watercolourist Albert Namatjira. Dana Lyn’s work completes the set: an ode to Mierle Laderman Ukeles, long time ‘artist-in-residence’ of the New York City Department of Sanitation.

If none of the above is motivation enough, come and treat yourself to the amazing vocal stylings of soprano Ariadne Greif, our fearless and dazzling collaborator!

– Brooklyn Rider

Brooklyn Rider
Johnny Gandelsman | Violin
Colin Jacobsen | Violin
Nicholas Cords | Viola
Michael Nicolas | Cello
Ariadne Greif | Soprano

Clarice Assad (b. 1978)
Cinematheque [7′]

Padma Newsome (b. 1961)
Simpson’s Gap (from Gaps and Gorges) [7′]

Dana Lyn (b. 1974)
Maintenance Music [7′]

Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951)
String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10 [31′]

I. Mässig
II. Sehr rasch
III. Litanei. Langsam
IV. Entrückung. Sehr langsam

INTERVAL

Colin Jacobsen (b. 1978)
Chalk and Soot [35′]