ConcertPulse
Ensemble Resonanz / Jeroen Berwaerts
Elbphilharmonie, Kleiner Saal (Hamburg)
In everyday life, the city is more than just a background, a collective experiment in the social laboratory, a place for life and stories, for memories and longing: Ensemble Resonanz accompanies Copland to nighttime New York, and Tchaikovsky to an Italian summer; it lets Vito Zuraij serve up a surprise or two, then travels on to Rome and joins forces with Vivier to look behind the scenes at ourselves and at a foreign environment. A melancholy trumpet tune rises from the nocturnal solitude, gently underscored by shimmering strings, and fantasises about people’s nighttime thoughts in a city that never sleeps. This concert opens with Aaron Copland’s ode to New York »Quiet Cities«, which captures the feeling of space and the American spirit even in this huge metropolis. By way of contrast, Claude Vivier immerses himself in the sphere of mystery and longing with a work at once accessible and yet enigmatic, full of free-floating melodies that bring to life recollections of foreign places, people and musical traditions. In his »Souvenir de Florence«, Tchaikovsky blends his personal memories of an Italian summer with Russian folk music, while Ensemble Resonanz combines Tchaikovsky with Andrew Norman’s »Companion Guide to Rome«, each part of which consists of a study of Roman buildings. Can floor decoration be audible? Can music be turned into wallpaper?