Audiences will be treated to a tour de force of three rhythmically driven masterpieces of the 20th and 21st century on 10 July.
For the first time ever, Béla Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936) will be performed in Malta. The piece is one of the Hungarian composer’s best-known compositions and has made its way into many popular culture genres: from the films Being John Malkovich and The Shining, to being mentioned in John Fowles’ novel The Collector and as underscore for two Doctor Who stories.
The premiere will be performed by the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra as part of an annual feature of the Malta International Arts Festival programme: an innovative programme of 20th century and contemporary works that will also see Concerto in D for String Orchestra (1946) by Igor Stravinsky and Wojciech Kilar’s Ricordanza per Archi (2005)under the baton of Czech conductor Pavel Šnajdr .
The piano part of Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta will be performed by Greek pianist Konstantinos Destounis who is regarded as one of the most prominent Greek artists of his generation. He has won many international competitions, most notably the Grand Prix Maria Callas in Athens, the Southern Highlands in Canberra, and the Bremen European Piano Competition.
Born in modern-day Czechia in 1975, Pavel Šnajdr is currently an opera conductor at the National Theatre Brno, which he himself established in 2011 and which mainly focuses on performing contemporary music.
Stravinsky’s Concerto in D for String Orchestra, is one of the composer’s brightest works and is full of musical texture and rhythm, making it one of his most accessible pieces. In the decades following its composition, the concerto was choreographed many times as a ballet, with Jerome Robbins’ The Cage (1951) being the most famous of such uses.
Audiences may recognise Wojciech Kilar as the composer of music for films such as Roman Polański's The Pianistand Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker’s Dracula. His Ricordanza per Archi is characterised by vast sound planes and numerous repetitions.
Let yourself be transported on a journey through the 20th and 21st centuries through these rhythmically driven masterpieces.
To find out more about Bartók – Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and to book tickets, click here.