Horizon 7

Featuring

George Benjamin
Bejun Mehta
David Robertson
Daniel Harding
Tan Dun
Dominic Seldis

Concertgebouworkest
Nederlands Kamerkoor
Magnus Lindberg
Richard Rijnvos

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Composition History

Tan Dun's double bass concerto "The Wolf" is based on Jiang Rong's book "Wolf Totem," which explores the spiritual relationship between man and nature in the Mongolian steppes.

Compositional Technique

In "fuoco e fumo," Richard Rijnvos uses a cowbell with a Doppler effect to ignite the spark of the fire, and a jute bag filled with glasses dropped from two meters high to create a special effect near the end.

Composition History

Richard Rijnvos's "fuoco e fumo" is about the destruction of the La Fenice opera house in Venice by fire in 1996.

Composition History

George Benjamin's "Dream of the Song" is a song cycle inspired by literary sources from the Spanish city of Granada.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Magnus Lindberg, along with fellow composers Esa-Pekka Salonen and Kaija Saariaho, and conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste, formed a group called Korvat auki (Ears Open) to confront the perceived alienation of contemporary music from society.

Compositional Technique

For "Dream of the Song," George Benjamin assigns poems by 11th-century Hebrew poets Samuel HaNagid and Solomon Ibn Gabirol to the solo countertenor, and verses by Spanish poet Federico García Lorca to a small female chorus.

Instruments

In Tan Dun's "The Wolf," the double bass is used to imitate a Mongolian two-stringed fiddle called a morin khuur, and the introduction features six double bass players and four percussionists playing Tibetan singing bowls.