Thursday 24th May, 10:30pm, Festivalcafé

Glemslens territorier

Rolf Hind's Voyage of Discovery

Tristan Murail and Anders Brødsgaard have created piano works which are as grand in their scope and ambition as the greatest works by the Romantic pianist composers.

Rolf Hind is a world-class pianist. But he leaves Chopin to others in order to focus on his great love for contemporary music – which he plays with such superlative skill that a critic posed the question: ”How many hands does Rolf Hind have?”

At this concert, he plays two major piano works which are ambitious reconnaisances of the inexhaustible possibilities of the piano.

For Tristan Murail, music is first and foremost an exploration of the physical qualities and possibilities of sound – he is one of the major representatives of Spectral music. In Territoires de l'oubli, Murail lets the pianist explore the resonances of the piano. The sustaining pedal is constantly in use and the fact that hammers must hit the strings to produce sound in a piano is seen almost as a necessary evil  – the hammers leaving "scars" in the music's continuum of resonances. In the silent as well as the noisy passages, it is the suspended reverberations which are the focus of attention.

The title of Anders Brødsgaard's great piano suite is a palindrome in Latin – a sentence which may be read in the same way in both directions. In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni means ”We go wandering at night and are consumed by fire”. Like the title, the seven movements of the work combine complicated systems and intensely poetic moods. In the course of the work, Brødsgaard alludes to the music of Scriabin, Debussy and Messiaen, and the third movement Requiem is dedicated to the memory of the composer's father. The other movements bear the titles Joker, Attacca, PyroMania, Bacchanal, 7-9-13 and Hymn.

Rolf Hind – piano 

Program

TRISTAN MURAIL (b. 1947): Territoires de l'Oubli (1977)
ANDERS BRØDSGAARD (b. 1955): In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1990-94)

1. Bacchanale
2. Hymn
3. Joker
4. Pyromaniac
5. Attaca
6. Requiem
7. 7-9-13