Glanert: Double Concerto surveys Martian landscape
(February 2008)
Detlev Glanert’s new Double Concerto for two pianos and orchestra receives its premiere in Glasgow on 15 March, with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Martyn Brabbins. The work was created thanks to the Borletti-Buitoni Trust, with the piano duo of Simon Crawford-Phillips and Philip Moore winning a fellowship in 2004 and deciding to spend their funding on the commissioning of the new double concerto.
Glanert explores the idea of ‘double-play’ on a number of levels. The solo keyboard parts could not be heroic in the Romantic sense – as the composer notes “a double hero is no hero” – but rather they combine to “view the same things through two pairs of eyes. This ‘superpiano’ provides the foreground while the orchestral part is often a mirror reflection forming a background.”
Glanert was fascinated to see the Pathfinder images of Mars, and was intrigued that the physical features of the planet had been given names from European mythology as if “man interprets unknown landscapes with known things”. The concerto’s nine movements are named after Martian landscape features, from Nirgal Vallis to Elysium Mons, viewed as if across space.
The curtain goes up on Glanert’s new music theatre work, Nijinsky’s Diary, at the Aachen Theatre on 6 April. The famed dancer wrote his diary in the last six weeks before his committal to an asylum at the age of 30. As well as memories of his childhood and collaborations with Diaghilev, the text reveals his disintegrating present state and his bizarre visions for the future. The drama is shared between male/female pairs of singers, actors and dancers, with a supporting instrumental ensemble.
> Further information on Work: Doppelkonzert
Photo: Iko Freese / DRAMA
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