Bruch’s warm and richly evocative Kol Nidrei takes its inspiration from traditional Jewish melody. Although not Jewish himself, Bruch had strong links to the community and makes masterful use of the solo cello to depict the cantor in the melody of Kol Nidrei, a declaration recited at Yom Kipper, alongside the Hebrew melodies of ‘O Weep for Those that wept on Babel’s Stream’. Also putting the cello to inventive use, Fazil Say’s concerto Never Give Up is a strong political statement about the harrowing terror of attacks in Europe and Turkey, and the need for freedom and peace. Harsh percussive motifs jar with screeching woodwind passages to depict the horrors, before concluding more optimistically with birdsong, waves and traditional Turkish rhythms.
Fascinated with the way Beethoven takes a micro-motif and turns it into a great masterpiece, along with an interest in particle physics and the way high energy collisions behave, Fabien Waksman’s Protonic Games takes seven motifs from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and uses these as the particles which collide and transform. An explosive opening gives way to a melting chorale, before journeying through to an ecstatic solar chord finish. Given Waksman’s homage to Beethoven’s Seventh symphony, it is only fitting that we conclude this concert with the original masterpiece that is Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7.