Programme

Peter Eötvös
The gliding of the eagle in the skies (2011/16)

Peter Eötvös
Alle vittime senza nome (2016)

Peter Eötvös
Halleluja - Oratorium balbulum (2015)

Peter Eötvös, Conductor

Iris Vermillion, Mezzo-Soprano

Eric Stokloßa, Tenor

Matthias Brandt, Narrator

Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks

Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks

Maybe music cannot change the world, but it can certainly hold up a mirror to its absurdities. And this is precisely what the music of Peter Eötvös does! Oratorium balbulum – Halleluja, to a libretto by the Hungarian writer Péter Esterházy, is a merry but wily stocktaking of our present day. At its centre is a stuttering prophet who, faced with the state of our world, simply cannot manage to make any predictions about the future. The gliding of the eagle in the skies was composed in 2016 on a commission from the Basque national orchestra, Euskadiko Orkestra. Eötvös took his inspiration from the image of an eagle soaring high in the sky, a figure from a Basque song that the composer considers the ne plus ultra of complete liberty. Alle vittime senza nome (To the nameless victims) was prompted by shocking pictures of the refugee tragedy. It is a three-movement orchestral piece recalling the numberless human beings who have perished in the Mediterranean on the way to a better life.