[last tickets] Sonia Wieder-Atherton, Sarah Rothenberg & Chantal Akerman

People queueing, waiting for a bus or train. People walking through snow-covered streets lugging bags. People who stay silent, because history has taught them to. These are characters from the film D’Est (1993) by Chantal Akerman. In it, the Belgian director captures the reality in the former Soviet territories after the fall of the Wall. From summer to winter, she filmed people, buildings and landscapes, and assembled them into an impressionist poem.

When cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton saw a passage from the film while Rachmaninoff’s cello sonata was playing in the background, she immediately knew that this footage and music have something to tell each other. Together with Akerman, she created a haunting concert of images in which D’Est resonates poetically with music by Schnittke, Martinů, Chopin and other composers from Russia and Eastern Europe.

Programme

Maurice Ravel (1875-1935) 

Kaddish for cello and piano

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)

Sonata for cello and piano in g, Op. 19 (1st part)

Boris Tchaikovsky (1925-1996)

Sonata for solo cello (Aria)

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)

Sonata for cello and piano, Op. 65 (Scherzo: Allegro con brio)

Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959)

Sonata No. 2 for cello and piano (Largo)

Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) 

Moravian poem for solo cello (transcr. Franck Krawczyk & Sonia Wieder-Atherton)

Béla Bartók (1881-1945)

Romanian Folk Dances for cello and piano (IV, III)

Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998)

Sonate nr. 1 for cello and piano

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Adagio for cello and piano, Op. 97bis (excerpt from the ballet Cendrillon)

image © Mondino