Divertimento! Subscription series concert

About the programme

Arthur Lourié, still one of the great unknowns of the twentieth century, wrote his Concerto da Camera while in exile in the USA in the midst of the Second World War. Its six short movements blend neobaroque gestures with playful elements of 1980s-era Soviet post-serial music in a visionary synthesis.

Artistic partner Patricia Kopatchinskaja contributes a new composition to the concert. Her Danses Macabres gnash their teeth. You can hear the skeletons rattling, and laughing Death has put on a frozen mask: macabre dances for a macabre time. Sándor Veress' arrangement of Zoltán Kodály's Marosszék Dances contrasts this with vitality, though tinged with melancholy.

Béla Bartók's Divertimento is the music of a relaxing summer in the Swiss chalet of his patron Paul Sacher. It’s full of lively dance rhythms, and echoes Hungarian, Romanian, and Viennese styles. Only the middle section, a funeral march, reflects on the other side of such exuberance.