Curating performances at one of the world’s most prestigious classical music centers is usually about presenting the best, the hottest, and the newest. But Lincoln Center, a venue that doesn't go wanting for superlatives, is taking a different, and more personal, tack in its first-ever “White Light” festival, which takes place in venues across New York City between October 28 and November 18. Of course, this being a Lincoln Center production, “White Light” has, even in its inaugural edition, indeed attracted several of the world’s most accomplished and innovative artists, from the Dresden Staatskapelle orchestra to violinist Gidon Kremer to the vocal group The Hilliard Ensemble.
The festival’s organizer and Lincoln Center’s Vice President of Programming, Jane Moss, says that this series sprang from a very individual impulse: she saw herself and myriad friends, acquaintances, and colleagues so trapped in 21st-century “busy-ness” that they had no room to make authentic and deep connections to each other and to art.
The antidote to that ever-present contemporary virus is what she calls "the most personal event I've ever put together": “White Light,” a multi-genre and highly eclectic set of programming that over the course of three weeks stretches out to myriad forms and expressions, including everything from film, theater and dance offerings to sets by indie rock idols, as well as performances of both canonical and new classical music.
All over the world, contemplation and spiritual reflection is often expressed through music for the voice: there is something at once very pure, but also very deeply human and even touchingly fallible, about that sound. Moreover, several ancient languages make an explicit connection between the words for “breath” and for the concept of a divine spark or spirit, including pneuma in Greek and spiritus in Latin--a connection that is brought to bear during this series.
For example, conductor Daniel Harding, the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Westminster Choir, and soloists soprano Christiane Karg and baritone Matthias Goerne, bring Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem to Avery Fisher Hall on Oct. 31st, while Philippe Herreweghe and the Collegium Vocale Gent pair Brahms with Bruckner in a Nov. 2nd performance. Meanwhile, on Nov. 16th, organist Paul Jacobs plays Bach’s Clavier-Ubung III on Alice Tully Hall’s newly restored organ, with the Clarion Choir interspersing the organ muisc with the Lutheran chorales that were so much part of the culture of Bach’s day.
Another festival presentation invites us to re-explore one the most central spiritual works in the Western Christian tradition in a very modern context: Thomas Tallis’ staggering, 40-part Spem in alium, which Tallis wrote sometime around the year 1570. To celebrate the opening of “White Light,” Canadian installation artist Janet Cardiff is presenting her piece “The Forty-Part Motet” in which 40 speakers placed around a space within Jazz at Lincoln Center, with each speaker issuing one single part from the motet; visitors, walking amidst the speakers, surround themselves with Tallis’ music.
Other musicians taking part in "White Light" are choosing to mix old and new in intriguing fashion, including The Tallis Scholars, whose Nov. 7th program mixes together works by Praetorius, Tallis, Byrd and Palestrina with music by the contemporary Estonian composer Arvo Part, whose music is also heard Nov. 12th and 13th in two performances—including an intimate late-night concert—by the Latvian National Choir, led by Tonu Kaljuste. The ancient and the modern meet once again in the long-term collaboration between the vocal ensemble The Hilliard Ensemble and saxophonist Jan Garbarek (Nov. 12th).
Meanwhile, instrumentalists will also be exploring the spiritual. The Kremerata Baltica, founded and led by violinist Gidon Kremer, play Beethoven’s mammoth and profound String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131, alongside New York premieres of Giya Kancheli and Gina Auerbach on Nov. 11th; in two late-night recitals, pianist Alexei Lubimov makes a wide traversal, from Bach to Schubert to Valentin Silvestrov and beyond (Nov. 11th & 13th).
For a full and chronological listing of “White Light” events, including two pre-concert artist discussions led by Ariama’s editor, Anastasia Tsioulcas, visit the festival website.
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by Anastasia Tsioulcas
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