Raschèr Saxophone Quartet & Rias Kammerchor . Paul Hillier

Carlo Gesualdo (1560-1613) not only acquired fame through his authoritative compositions but, according to a spicy anecdote, he must be musical history's most famous murderer. If Gesualdo continues to enchant us, it is because of his ground-breaking and highly expressive madrigals. Gesualdo stands at the centre of this concert given by the Rias Chamber choir and the Raschèr Saxophone Quartet. In the score of Gesualdo's '3 Sacrae Cantiones', two of the vocal parts were absent and the works were taken up and completed in 1960 by Stravinsky. Drawing on the music of Gesualdo, the German composer Bernd Franke (1959) has used it as a source of inspiration for 'Significatio'. The concert will begin with 'Amao Omi' by Giya Kancheli; a work, which although in some senses stands apart from the other compositions, contains a great many criss-crossing secondary movements and rising crescendos, which ties in well with the rest of the programme.