The ‘Variation a Day’ project exploring each of the pieces in Variations for Judith began yesterday (see rationale here); preceding each variation with the aria to which each responds, ‘Bist du bei mir,’ throws up the resonances between them.
Day One began with fourth-year soprano Kathryn Cox singing the aria, before Anthony Burton’s Breaking Away, whilst earlier this afternoon the aria prefaced Stephen Johns’ evocative Spitalfields Echoes. These delicate responses to the aria have really drawn the audience into the performance, both Burton’s filigree fragments of part of the melodic line above a singing lower-register incarnation, and Johns’ bell-like incantations floating above static chords.
The odyssey continues tomorrow at 1.15pm with the aria and Antony Payne’s excitingly dissonant canonic variation. See you there…
Lurking at the heart of a fascinating programme that include Bach’s sumptuous Concerto for Two Violins in D minor and Telemann’s Tafelmusik Suite in D is Cage’s Living Room Music, written for an unspecified quartet that plays any object or architectural feature which can readily be found in a living-room. The second movement sees the performers turn to speech, using parts of ‘The World Is Round’ by Gertrude Stein, whilst the contrasting outer movements see household objects transformed into funky percussion – less ‘Uptown Funk’ than ‘At Home Funk.’
