Event info

Cauda Collective is an experimental chamber music collective that aims to find creative ways to share classical and contemporary music by collaborating with different fields of arts. The concert experience should be alluring, unique and both visually and aurally interesting. The role of the performer is challenged, he composes, arranges, improvises in addition to performing. Cauda Collective premiers at least one new composition in every concert.

The concert is titled Confession of Love, all the music performed is connected to love, in one way or another.

György Ligetti: Sonata for cello solo, first movement: Dialogo, 1948-1953
Dialogo is one of Ligeti‘s first compositions, he wrote it when he was about to finish his studies for his fellow student in the music academy in Budepest. Her name was Annus Virány, and Ligety was secretly in love with her. Virány said she never knew why he gave her the piece, but she had thanked him but never played it.

Ligeti describes the piece as a conversation between a man and a woman, he plays with the different texture of the C and G strings that interpret his and her voice.

Halldór Smárason: New piece, 2018

Cauda Collective premiers a new composition by Halldór Smárason.

Ernest Chausson: Chanson perpétuelle, 1898
For soprano and piano quintet.

The composition was dedicated to the singer Jeanne Raunay, who premiered it in January 1899. Half a year later Chausson died from an accident. The piece was not published until 1911. In the text by Charles Cros, a woman describes her lover who left her. She begs the winds to tell him she‘s dying. She remembers when he kissed her on the forehead  everything changed, and she became his forever. But then his heart turned cold as he left her to travel to faraway places. “I will die in the pond, among the flowers, under the sleeping water” she says. “May my last breath fly, like a butterfly charmed by the beautiful roses of May, onto the lips of my beloved”.

Leos Janacek: String Quartet no. 2, Intimate letters, 1928
Leos Janacek‘s second string quartet, “Intimate Letters” was inspired by a long and spiritual friendship with Kamila Strösslová, a married woman who was 38 years younger than him. The string quartet reflects on the nature of their relationship, but they wrote over 700 letters to each other. “You stand behind every note, you, living, forceful, loving. The fragrance of your body, the glow of your kisses, the softness of your lips. Those notes of mine kiss all of you. They call for you passionately.” The string quartet was premiered September 11th 1928, a month after Janacek passed away.

Performers are: Hulda Jónsdóttir, violin, Sigrún Harðardóttir, violin, Þóra Margrét Sveinsdóttir, viola, Þórdís Gerður Jónsdóttir, cello, Björk Níelsdóttir, soprano and Jane Ade Sutarjo, piano. Visuals and design is by Eva Björg Harðardóttir.

The concert is supported by “Tónlistarsjóður SUT og Ruthar Hermanns” and the Icelandic Artist Salary Fund.