Name: Seeing the Light: Glass, Pärt, Rautavaara
Start: 2023-02-26T00:00:00.000Z
End: 2023-02-26T00:00:00.000Z
Location: South Bank Centre

Organization

Admin

BBC Concert Orchestra

Southbank Centre

Conductor

Anna-Maria Helsing

Others

Instrumentalist

Violinist

Mari Samuelsen

Violin

Seeing the Light: Glass, Pärt, Rautavaara

London

United Kingdom

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Seeing the Light: Glass, Pärt, Rautavaara: The Light Glass (+5 More)

Public

The Light

Lonely Angel

Bær

Fratres

Symphony No. 7 “Angel of Light”

White Flowers Take Their Bath

Approved

South Bank Centre

Glass takes us on a journey to explore a world of scientific possibility in the first piece he ever wrote for a symphony orchestra, The Light. His portrait of a moment of discovery hails the scientists who paved the way for Einstein’s theory of relativity with their experiments investigating the speed of light.

While Glass traces the dawn of a new era of human thought, other composers hark back to earlier imaginings. Rautavaara, Vasks and Pärt conjure otherworldly beings in mystical and meditative music. Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara contemplates the infinite in his Seventh Symphony, Angel of Light, a pinnacle of the angel-inspired pieces he has been creating since the late 1970s.

Norwegian violinist Mari Samuelsen brings her imagination and finesse to a selection of haunting pieces, including Pēteris Vasks’ luminously mournful Lonely Angel. She also performs Arvo Pärt’s transcendent Fratres, one of the composer’s tintinnabuli works, characterised by pure, bell-like sounds.

Critics praised the energy and emotion of Helsing and Samuelsen’s collaboration with the orchestra last year at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Bachtrack reported that their performance ‘hit the spot… A standing ovation duly followed.’

English

Seeing the Light: Glass, Pärt, Rautavaara by Glass, Vasks, Guðnadóttir, Pärt, Rautavaara, Arakelian, I. M., From (2023/2023), Conductor Anna-Maria Helsing, South Bank Centre, London, United Kingdom

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Ensemble

Programme, About & Synopsis

Photos

Further reading

Performance Dates & Venues

Venues