LIGETI: Sonata for solo viola (1991-94)

• Hora lungǎ
• Loop
• Facsar
• Presto con sordino
• Lamento
• Chaconne chromatique

Jonathan Vinocour, viola

BERIO: Sequenza V for trombone (1966)

Jonathan Reycraft, trombone

George CRUMB: Sonata for
solo cello (1955)

• Fantasia
• Tema pastorale con variazioni
• Toccata

Melissa Brooks-Rubright, cello

LIGETI: Poème symphonique
for 100 metronomes (1962)

The Flavin Concert Series at the Pulitzer is held in collaboration with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. The pieces performed relate directly to the exhibition on view, and are performed by members of the Saint Louis Symphony. Each of the programs are chosen by Music Director David Robertson based on the way they relate to the exhibition concepts and the works of art on view.

 

The paradoxical nature of Dan Flavin’s art is realized through the concentration of our senses. Art that may appear so reductively minimal reveals an intense, overwhelming richness as we explore its few, yet essential, formal and structural elements. Likewise, in this program three very different composers take a singular element, the solo instrument, and create complex and varied musical worlds. They extend a tradition that begins with Bach, with György Ligeti’s Poème symphonique for 100 Metronomes taking the tradition into our age of mechanical, selfless repetition. What could seem less musical than a repeating metronome (or less artful than a fluorescent light tube)? Yet the simple idea of the ticking metronome, through multiplication, creates an almost indescribably poetic and musical event. As Ligeti employs the metronome, so too Flavin makes use of industrial, mass-produced light fixtures—which in their utilitarian context are inelegant, at best—but under the artist’s design these irreverent objects become sublime, especially here within Tadao Ando’s spaces. In this concert, we see and hear statements of wonder.