Songs from Slavic Lands
by Sonia Wieder-Atherton
Mitteleuropa, the centre of Europe, the crossroads where several cultures merge. Under its protecting wing, at once oppressive and fascinating, the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire assembled cultures which struggled not to lose their identity.Their resistance was channelled through love of their forbidden mother tongue.The way they listened to it,their incessant study of the themes of its folklore,characterise the highly individual universes of composers like Mahler, Janácek, and Martinu.To interpret them is above all to explore their rapport with language.
Further east, it is a question of transmission. Music says what it is impossible to describe. In all the regimes to which Russia has been subjected, there has been terror but also, beyond that, a force that sometimes implodes, sometimes explodes. What is said is said on behalf of all those who do not have the right to speak.
Attracted by these twin examples of resistance (one to retain a language, the other to say what is forbidden), drawn magnetically to this part of the world which I keep coming back to, I listened once more to the works I knew and loved, and I discovered others, written for solo voice, chorus, violin, orchestra, piano. I asked Franck Krawczyk to help me trace a path through them or, in the case of Janácek, to base his own work on them.
And I chose to use a string orchestra to bring out the depth and tension in Rachmaninoff’s Vespers
and the intensity in Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky, and to underline the explosive virtuosity of the dances and other highly rhythmic pieces.
Thus the road we follow takes us from a tragic song to a lullaby, from a lied relating a dream to a dance with gypsy inflections,as if we were being guided by the chapters of a single story.
Naïve’s astonishing new signing, cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton, releases her debut album on the label featuring a collection of ancient folk melodies played on solo lyrical cello with string orchestra.
Listen to excerpts from the release here: http://www.naive.fr/#/arti
http://en.naive.fr/#/work/chants-d-est
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