Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho (*1952) draws listeners into her soundscape: From the brooding darkness of the opening bars, the audience finds itself dragged into the unfolding nightmare. The libretto by Sofi Oksanen interweaves two narratives of a school shooting. One focuses on the students and their teacher who were present at the time of the massacre. The second is set in the present day at a wedding with the family of the shooter celebrating their innocent son’s marriage. A thriller-like intensity shifts time levels and a mixture of nine languages. “The most powerful work Saariaho has written in a career now in its fifth decade” (The New York Times). Director Simon Stone approaches this multi-layered subject with sensitivity and empathy, supported by Susanna Malkki’s fine reading of the score on the rostrum of the London Symphony Orchestra and a great cast including Magdalena Kožena and Sandrine Piau. “A composer creates her masterpiece with Innocence” The New York Times
Arvo Pärt – Adam’s Passion
Adam’s Passion is the moving first collaboration between two “masters of slow motion who harmonize perfectly with each other” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). In the spectacular setting of a former submarine factory, American director and universal artist Robert Wilson creates a poetic visual world in which the mystical musical language of the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt can cast its meditative spell. Three of Pärt’s major works – Adam’s Lament, Tabula rasa, and Miserere, as well as Sequentia, a new work composed especially for this production – are brought together here using light, space, and movement to create a tightly-woven Gesamtkunstwerk in which the artistic visions of these two great artists mirror each other.