PÄRT 90 : SHOSTAKOVICH 50
These events open for Priority Booking for Britten Sinfonia members on Tuesday 22 October, 10.30am. General Booking opens on 28 October.
Performers
Programme
- Shostakovich
- Chamber Symphony Op. 110a
- Tavener
- Song for Athene
- Cheryl Frances-Hoad
- new work
- Arvo Pärt
- Fratres
Mein Weg
Tabula Rasa
Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten
A programme that cuts to the essence of Dmitri Shostakovich, who died 50 years ago in 2025, and Arvo Pärt, who will be 90. One of them a Soviet composer to the end, the other brought up in the USSR but an exile from Estonia in Berlin from 1980 to 2010.
Shostakovich’s eighth string quartet, later scaled up for orchestral strings, was dedicated to “the memory of the victims of fascism and war”. With extraordinary, compressed power and multiple quotes from earlier works, it forms a dramatic musical autobiography – his initials DSCH, translated into musical notes, threading through this intense and gripping work.
Pärt’s music is a complete contrast: a clearing away of complexity to start anew. Strikingly beautiful and minimal textures – the tolling of bells never far away – give space for deep thought and spiritual engagement. The programme is completed by the sombre ecstatic Song for Athene by Pärt’s closest British counterpart, John Tavener, and by a new work for strings and percussion by Cheryl Frances-Hoad.