SG Music: Maya Fridman
Maya Fridman is a very talented cellist. With her unique style and passion she touches her audience. In her program 'Passacaglia' she ascends from Dante's gates of hell (Sollima) to the musical universe of Bach.
Time: 16:45-17:30 hrs. Doors open 16:30 hrs.
Free entrance, registration is not required, but be in time: limited number of seats available.
Maya Fridman
Maya Fridman was born in Russia and raised in the Netherlands. She started playing the cello at a young age and has since won many awards and performed on international stages. Her musical style is inspired by various genres, including classical, jazz and world music. She is a versatile artist who has found her own way in the music world.
Program
“In the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost.” - Dante Alighieri, Inferno.
• Giovanni Sollima: Hell 1
• Johan Sebastian Bach: Sarabande from Violin Partita No. 1
• Bryce Dessner: Tuusula
• Fjóla Evans: Vatnaskuggi — meeting your water shadow
• Nikolai Korndorf: Passacaglia for cello solo
• Johan Sebastian Bach: Cello Suite no. 1
• Missy Mazzoli: Vespers
Program notes
“Passacaglia by Russian-Canadian composer Nikolai Korndorf’s (1997) is an instrumental version of Dante’s Commedia Divina. The choice of title, Passacaglia, is quite enigmatic, possibly addressing the word's etymology, from pasar to walk. Perhaps Korndorf saw the form as a symbol for Dante’s travels through Hell and Purgatory to Paradise. In any case, the music certainly seems to represent a voyage of some sort.” (from “Nikolai Korndorf and his music” by Alexander Ivashkin)
Fridman imagines this whole music program as a symbolic passacaglia, beginning at Dante’s Gates of Hell in the composition by Giovanni Sollima and gradually ascending through Bach’s musical universes.
‘Hell I’ (2000) is the opening piece of "Songs From The Divine Comedy” by Italian composer-cellist Giovanni Sollima based on the Divina Commedia by Dante Alighieri (1265 - 1321). “Dante places the gate of hell - told as a place of extreme pain - at an unspecified spot in Jerusalem. ‘Hell I’ has roots suspended between Mediterranean/Sicilian and Jewish singing.”
While writing ‘Passacaglia’, Korndorf was preoccupied with the numerous unexplored possibilities of single-voiced music, as in Gregorian chant. One of the ideas pursued in the Passacaglia is an attempt to find a musical equivalent to Dante’s Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso in microtonal, diatonic, and whole-tone-scale textures, respectively. Moreover, the performer must recite lines of text from ‘Purgatorio’ and sing to produce triads together with the double stops on the cello. The lines chosen by Korndorf (to be recited by the cellist) are about the burning fires from which both Dante and his companion Virgil should escape or about the ‘voices’ by which they should be led.
‘Vespers’ by Missy Mazzoli (2014, arr. for cello 2021) is a modern-day take on the traditional Vespers prayer service, in which poems by Matthew Zapruder replace the customary sacred text.
Music inside the Black Box
Explore the world of music! Monthly on a Tuesday afternoon Studium Generale gives the floor to talented and promising young musicians. They are invited to take us on a musical road to other worlds, views and feelings. The concerts are open to everyone interested!
All concerts in this autumn-series:
- Tuesday 10 October - Maya Fridman
- Tuesday 14 November - Jawa & Shaza Manla
- Tuesday 12 December - Ashley Stapelfeldt
More information
This concert is organized by Studium Generale, in corporation with Gert Gering.
Contact: Has Klerx (Studium Generale).
Picture Maya Fridman © Brendon Heinst
