The Journey - Gwendolyn Masin & The Origin Ensemble
Poetry
The Journey - Gwendolyn Masin & The Origin Ensemble
The Hungarian-born Dutch-Irish violinist Gwendolyn Masin – in an expression of her strong connection to her roots – invites her House of Music audience to make an epic imaginary journey with her and tour several Eastern European musical cultures, from Ukraine to Romania and Hungary, through rarely heard folk-inspired classical music. She will be accompanied on the tour by the Origin Ensemble, a group of outstanding international musicians brought together by the artist and named after her 2016 album, Origin.
The composers of Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th and 21st centuries have used and continue to use their country's rich folk music heritage in a unique way to develop an authentic compositional language that will be understood by audiences both in their home country and abroad through its quality and contemporary musical instruments. In Hungary, the best-known example is the oeuvre of Béla Bartók. Bartók's concert will feature two dance series: the popular, virtuoso Romanian folk dances and the Six Dances in Bulgarian rhythm from Microcosm, whose characteristic rhythmic formula was named so by the composer himself. One of Kurtág's pieces and Ligeti's first quartet will be played, which is also called Bartók's String Quartet No. 7 after Kurtág. The Hungarian composers will be joined by works that are rarely heard in Hungary: the programme will also feature pieces by the Ukrainian national composer of late Romanticism, Mykolai Lysenko, the composer-pianist Zara Levina, born into a Jewish family in Crimea, Grigoraș Ionică Dinicu, the Romanian violinist star of the second half of the 20th century, as well as a world première by Swiss saxophonist and composer Antoine Auberson, which builds on Hungarian and Romanian folk music influences.
