Description
Double bill : « Schubert meets Silvestrov » et « Con Amore » – Gidon Kremer & Clowns.
When he secretly returns to the kingdom of Denmark in the hope of finally avenging his father, Hamlet crosses a cemetery at night. There he meets joyful gravediggers whose lewd songs form a striking contrast to the sorrowful location and Hamlets own melancholy. Lost in the earth, these workers point him to the bones of the buffoon Yorick, buried there for 22 years and dug up by chance. The image of the young prince tenderly holding the skull of his former friend in his hands has become emblematic. Yorick: the buffoon, the clown, and who was so funny, reduced to his grimace – alas, poor Yorick…
Born in 1937 in Kiev, Valentin Silvestrov writes in a similar limpid and pure style to Schubert. Gidon Kremer has chosen these two composers, whose music is accessible but also contains an unfathomable secret depth, for the first part of this astonishing show. In the second part, the violin of Kremer and the expressive bodies of the two clowns Julien Cottereau and Catherine Germain will dialogue “con amore” – offering a poetic and funny mirror of a fragile humanity to the public. Today, as in Shakespeare’s time, clowns stand apart from the normal human experience. Their symbolic make-up, body movements and limited language is designed to reflect man’s own behavior and offer a deeper meaning behind the lighthearted laughter. Intensely animated, they are also thus deeply vulnerable, and often remind us of our own fragility; just as Schubert and Silvestrov’s scores do too, in their own way. This performance will be about laughing to love and understand each other better before time takes us away. Alas, poor Yorick.
Program
Franz Schubert / String Quartet - No. 12 in C minor D703
Valentin Silvestrov / Five pieces for violin and piano
Franz Schubert / Sonata for violin and piano - No. 2 in A minor, D.385
Artists
Concert venue
rue du Vieux Collège 22
1950 Sion
Switzerland