Het Collectief

On Sunday 4 October 2015, the 7th International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival hosts the eminent Het Collectief music ensemble from Belgium in an exciting programme which will feature the Cyprus premiere of Schönberg’s Chamber Symphony No.1, over 100 years after it was composed, and Louis Andriessen’s subversive masterpiece Workers Union. The programme will also include works by Kaija Saariaho, and Cypriot composers Christina Athinodorou and Haris Sofokleous.

Schönberg completed his Chamber Symphony No.1 in 1906, towards the end of his first stylistic period, during which he composed his more tonal masterpieces including Verklärte Nacht and Pelléas und Mélisande. The Chamber Symphony is considered a milestone in the composer’s output and the precursor of his evolution as a twelve-tone composer. And whilst his music of that period was noticeably influenced by late Romantic composers such as Wagner, Bruckner and Mahler, in his Chamber Symphony, Schönberg expressed a rather terse and ground-breaking compositional language, which was still fundamentally tonal yet highly chromatic. The Chamber Symphony was originally scored for 15 solo instruments but it was later transcribed in five different versions by Schönberg and his most eminent students, Anton Webern and Alban Berg. The chamber version of the work was completed in 1922 by Webern. The work, having duration of about 20 minutes, was intended to be performed alongside Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, hence it employed the same instrumentation – piano, violin, cello, flute and clarinet.

Louis Andriessen was born in 1939 in Utrecht to a musical family. He has been compared to American minimalists such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass although his compositional language is much more forceful, intense and uncompromising. Andriessen’s works reveal his resistance to the status quo and they are inspired by his political idealism and revolutionary beliefs. Musically he was influenced by Stravinsky and early minimalism as well as gamelan and jazz. One of his strikingly political works, the Workers Union, composed in 1975, is scored for a loud ensemble of unspecified instruments which improvise their individual pitches while they rhythmically play in unison. The work was Andriessen’s endeavour to reproduce within his music an idealized sense of his democratic beliefs. The emerging sense of “collective unison” in the piece reveals the composer’s political aesthetic at the time – that no person in the ensemble has a more important or privileged role than the rest. In Andriessen's words: "Only in the case of every player playing with such an intention that their part is an essential one, the work will succeed; just as in the political work."

HET COLLECTIEF

“These great chamber musicians perform the contemporary repertoire with such a commitment, such a mastery that it might as well sound like a Chopin prelude” Classique Mais Pas Has Been

The chamber music ensemble Het Collectief was founded in 1998 in Brussels. Working consistently from a solid nucleus of five musicians, the ensemble has created an intriguing and idiosyncratic sound, achieved by an unfamiliar mix of strings, wind instruments and piano. In its repertoire, Het Collectief returns to the Second Viennese School, the roots of modernism. Starting from this solid basis, it explores the important repertoire of the 20th century, as well as the very latest experimental trends. The quintet also creates a furore with daring crossovers between the contemporary and the traditional repertoire and with adaptations of ancient music. Next to the many concert venues in Belgium, Het Collectief regularly brings its productions to important concert all over the world, including The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Poland, Hong Kong, Peru and Brazil.

PROGRAMME:
Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951): Chamber Symphony No.1 (Cyprus Premiere)
Louis Andriessen (b.1939): Workers Union (Cyprus Premiere)
Kaija Saariaho (b.1952): Cendres (Cyprus Premiere)
Christina Athinodorou (b.1981): Messa Aktis (Cyprus Premiere)
Haris Sofokleous (b.1977): Splash No.2 (World Premiere)

Information: Pharos Arts Foundation Tel. (+357) 22-663871 / www.pharosartsfoundation.org
Box Office: Directly from the Foundation’s website www.pharosartsfoundation.org/Tickets_online.htm or Tel. 9666-9003 (Monday - Friday 10:00am-3:00pm

The event is part of the 7th International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival