“The 2014 edition of the Juilliard School’s Focus! Festival will be devoted to the world of Alfred Schnittke, the iconoclastic Russian composer, who died in 1998,” writes Allan Kozinn in Monday’s (12/16) New York Times. The festival, which runs from Jan. 24 to 31, and commemorates the 80th anniversary of Schnittke’s birth, includes six concerts and one panel discussion, and will explore not only Schnittke’s works, but also those of four of his post-modernist contemporaries, Arvo Part, Sofia Gubaidulina, Giya Kancheli and Valentin Silvestrov. The festival begins and ends with orchestra concerts built around Schnittke’s symphonies—No. 4 (1984) on opening night, with Joel Sachs, the festival’s director, leading the New Juilliard Ensemble; Anne Manson is conducting the Juilliard Orchestra in No. 8 (1993), in its United States premiere for the closing concert. Mr. Sachs’s concert also includes the world premiere of a new version of Mr. Part’s ‘Sindone’ (2005, revised 2013) and Mr. Kancheli’s ‘Daytime Prayers’ (1990). Ms. Manson will offer the New York premiere of Ms. Gubaidulina’s ‘Fairytale Poem’ (1971) and Mr. Kancheli’s ‘And farewell goes out sighing …’ (1999).”
Posted December 17, 2013
