Be swept up by a stirring trio of powerful orchestral works by Britten, Tchaikovsky and Aldeburgh Festival featured composer, Anna Thorvaldsdottir.
The acclaimed composer is known for her mighty, elemental scores recalling the wild natural landscapes of her home country, Iceland. Metacosmos confronts something even bigger: the might and mystery of space. It is constructed around the natural balance between beauty and chaos – how elements can come together in (seemingly) utter chaos to create a unified, structured whole. Rumon Gamba, former Music Director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, who has worked with Thorvaldsdottir since the early 2000s, is making his Festival debut.
Metacosmos stands alongside two great pieces of elemental repertoire: Britten’s shattering first large orchestral work, and Tchaikovsky’s final Symphony, premiered just days before the composer’s death.
"The idea and inspiration behind Metacosmos, which is connected as much to the human experience as to the universe, is the speculative metaphor of falling into a black hole – the unknown – with endless constellations and layers of opposing forces connecting and communicating with each other, expanding and contracting, projecting a struggle for power as the different sources pull on you and you realize that you are being drawn into a force that is beyond your control." – Anna Thorvaldsdottir.
