Summerwinds Festival: Jakub Muras, Łukasz Brzezina: VIV4LDI FOREVER – Für immer
Jakub Muras, Saxophone
Łukasz Brzezina, Accordion
Clichéd? On the contrary: Immortal! With these top virtuosos, all “Four Seasons” come alive. Fresh, aromatic, intense. From timeless hits of Vivaldi, Max Richter’s recomposition of the Baroque suite of the Venetian and Astor Piazzolla’s famous “Las cuatro estaciones porteñas” – porteños is what the inhabitants of Buenos Aires call themselves – Jakub Muras and Łukasz Brzezina have mixed an electrifying program. In original arrangements for saxophone and accordion, the charismatic Poles, who are among the most awarded performers of their generation, bring three summers and winters, springs and autumns into vibrating resonance by matching the fast, crisp short third movements from each “stagione” of Vivaldi with relevant movements of Piazzolla and Richter.
Vivaldi evokes natural scenes: dancing shepherds in spring, a magnificent summer thunderstorm, autumn hunting, winter chaos, slipping, ice cold. For the composer from “La Serenissima,” the city of music, Venice, nature was, if not idyllic, then at least in order, whole. Nearly 350 years later, Piazzolla’s “estaciones” summon not natural phenomena, but psychological states, atmospheres, moods, and energies from Buenos Aires, where tango originated in its multicultural impoverished neighborhoods just before 1900. Piazzolla revolutionized this tango by merging it with European classical music and American jazz into Tango Nuevo. In his “seasons,” the fever and heat, nervousness, overpressure, melancholy, and passion of the porteños by the Río de la Plata are palpable. Such urbanity is radically modernized by Max Richter, one of the most influential composers of today. In 2012, he transforms iconic themes of the Baroque suite into an emotionally direct sound world of today. In his recomposition of Vivaldi’s seasons, genres blend: minimalism, contemporary classical, ambient, rock.
The next generation then plays with the seasons of the old: Muras & Brzezina “com-pose” a new seasonal suite for our time with “VIV4LDI FOREVER.”
VIV4LDI FOREVER
Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741): From: The Four Seasons, op. 8, No. 2, RV 315
Astor Piazzolla (1921–1992): Las cuatro estaciones porteñas
Max Richter (*1966): From: Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
