BRITTEN SINFONIA AND THE MARIAN CONSORT: RENAISSANCE MODERNS
Performers
- Britten Sinfonia
- The Marian Consort
Programme
- Binchois (arr. for strings by Lisa Illean)
- Two chansons
- Lusitano
- selected motets
- Gesualdo
- selected motets and madrigals
- Brett Dean
- Carlo
- Lisa Illean
- Arcing, stilling, bending, gathering (UK premiere, Britten Sinfonia co-commission)
- Plus a pre-concert screening of Werner Herzog’s 1995 film, Gesualdo: Death for five voices.
Aristocrat, murderer and composer of extraordinary music hundreds of years ahead of its time – join us in an exploration of the music and life of the sixteenth-century Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, Carlo Gesualdo.
Britten Sinfonia performs arrangements of Gesualdo’s motets, whose extremes of expression lead to harmonies that even today feel moving and refreshingly new.
Our collaboration with the acclaimed vocal ensemble The Marian Consort centres on the life and extraordinarily innovative music of sixteenth-century prince, composer and – infamously – murderer, Carlo Gesualdo. In addition to Gesualdo’s own motets and madrigals, the programme features Brett Dean’s darkly dramatic Carlo, mixing live and electronic sounds, and there is a pre-concert screening of cult filmmaker Werner Herzog’s idiosyncratic documentary, Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices. We also hear music by Gesualdo’s predecessor, the African-Portuguese composer Vincente Lusitano, and Lisa Illean’s haunting and mesmeric new work, offering fleeting glimpses of transparent tapestries of sound.
Priority booking for Britten Sinfonia supporters at The Barbican opens 25th September. General booking opens 29th September.