«Death and the Maiden» in Tokyo On Tour

About the programme

Alongside love, the music's "favourite theme" is clearly that of death. With this programme, Patricia Kopatchinskaja has created a kind of meditation on death, a reflection in various images, bizarre, sarcastic, ironic, daring...

It is only a short step from the rattling "Dance of  Death" in the Renaissance to Franz Schubert's song and string quartet Death and the Maiden: death always dances (and sings?) along. Does it help to invoke the Lord God in the face of this threat? This is what a Byzantine psalm tries to do: quietly, pleadingly. Things become more complicated with the notorious Carlo Gesualdo. His madrigal Moro, lasso, al mio duolo is the music of a murderer. And Kurtág raises the question of whether death means eternal peace at all. Or how else should one interpret his shortest piece for violin? Ruhelos? (Restless?)