Music at its most elemental and exhilarating.
Look up at night and you’ll see the stars – tiny fires in the sky. But for Yorta Yorta composer Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO, the spaces between the stars are as important as the stars themselves and this was the inspiration for Dutala – Star Filled Sky. The final stanza of Schiller’s text from Beethoven’s Choral Symphony provides the words in this powerful work for choir and orchestra: ‘Seek the Creator above the starry canopy.’
Debussy brings us down to earth, or rather takes us out to sea, with La Mer – a symphony in all but name. The sea is a life-giving force, says Jessica Cottis. Its power is greater than us, and with his wondrous rhythms and colours, Debussy builds a dialogue between elemental forces. The sea is beautiful, dangerous, vast and capricious, and Debussy gives us music to match.
Where does George Gershwin fit in this picture? For him the element is rhythm. With a single sultry clarinet riff, hisRhapsody in Blue brought the jazz age into the concert hall and made a serious business of popular success. Tamara-Anna Cislowska returns to the CSO to take on the jazz-inflected solos of this exhilarating ‘musical experiment’.
PROGRAM
Deborah Cheetham Fraillon
Dutala – Star Filled Sky
George Gershwin
Rhapsody in Blue (Ferde Grofé orchestration)
Claude Debussy
La Mer
ARTISTS
Jessica Cottis conductor
Tamara-Anna Cislowska piano
Canberra Symphony Orchestra
CSO Chorus