Weightless music is on the program when Berlin Academy of American Music performs at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Germany on June 4, 2024.
Under the direction of Garrett Keast, Berlin Academy of American Music will perform the World Premiere of A Mass of Stars Block the View by Josefine Opsahl and the German Premiere of Missy Mazzoli‘s Dark with Excessive Bright for Violin and String Orchestra with soloist Charlotte Thiele
Opsahl’s A Mass of Stars Block the View was commissioned by the orchestra. The work is an atmospheric, interstellar symphonic journey that:
(…) conceptually and musically investigates the anticipation of everything being much greater than what is at hand or graspable; the beauty of that “you can’t see the forest for the trees”.
The sensory bombardement of our current time makes it increasingly hard to both individually and collectively see clearly and exist in balance with mind, body, culture and nature.
– Josefine Opsahl
Mazzoli’s Dark with Excessive Bright was originally a concerto for double bass and string orchestra. The title of the work is a description of God’s robes taken from Milton’s Paradise Lost. For the composer, it also applies to “the ghostly, heart-rending sound of strings,” and indeed the piece contains nods to string techniques from multiple centuries past.
While loosely based in Baroque idioms, this piece slips between string techniques from several centuries, all while twisting a pattern of repeated chords beyond recognition.
– Missy Mazzoli