Collegium Vocale - Daniel Reuss - Pieter Wispelwey

Characteristic for the work of Sofia Gubaidulina (°1931) is the absence of absolute music. Unique influences materialize in her composition, which transcend the purely musical: a poem, a ritual, mystical or even Christian symbolic. In the last years of his life, FRancis of Assisi (1182-1226) wrote one of the master works of Italian literature, 'Il Cantico delle Creature,' a hymn to the honour of God and the beauty of all creation. This first expression of Italian literature is also an acme of Middle Age literature. Gubaidulina based 'The Canticle of the Sun' on this hymn. The cast - cello solo, percussion, celesta and choir - is unusual, to say the least. The cello functions as a sort of cantor, who broods, emphasises, amplifies and occasionally appears to skip along subtle pitches with microtonal nuances - a notation, which plays an important part in most of Gubaidulina's oeuvre. The spiritual power and the mystical ode to creation - most comparable to a form harking back to the 'laude spirituali' of the Middle Ages - turn this magisterial work into a contemporary expression of the ideas of Francis of Assisi. No one other than Pieter Wispelwey accounts for the cello part. He has impressed on several occasions in the deSingel in the past, as a soloist with the Bach suites, as well as in chamber music with a full orchestra to back him up. In this program he will, for the first time, collaborate with our resident choir, Collegium Vocale Gent.