In the first years of the 20th century, before World War I would brutally sweep away lives and values, romantic music was reaching its limits, yet at the same time was embracing the innovations that would later enable it to morph into modernism. Both Mahler’s Songs on the death of children and Schoenberg’s First chamber symphony balance between something very old and something quite novel, representing the glorious (but also painful) end of a world and the beginning of a new one. One century later, Penderecki’s music, albeit expressed in a completely different idiom, struggles to reach the irrational and the metaphysical — and achieves this in the way that only “great” music can. Three milestone works of 20th century music whose essence is brilliantly brought out by the dynamic readings of Ergon Ensemble, whose members are intimately familiar with the peculiarities and the secrets of contemporary musical creation.
With the support of the Austrian Embassy
