Testament

This Thursday, I’m presenting my second ANAM Fellowship concert, Testament. I’ve been working with a string quartet and just today had my first rehearsal with 11 other violists (!) led by a wonderful conductor, Dominic Harvey.

Testament is a 12-viola piece by Australian composer Brett Dean. It’s named after the Heiligenstadt Testament, which Beethoven wrote (while in Heiligenstadt) to his brothers in despair about life enduring worsening deafness. You can read more about it and get a link to a translation here.

Brett’s piece took the idea of this document and its emotional content, weaving in musical quotations from a Beethoven string quartet (Razumovsky quartet no. 1). We’ll perform Testament, the Razumovsky quartet, and music by the contemporary Hungarian composer György Kurtág who was Brett Dean’s most significant mentor.

I’ll joined by some of my oldest and dearest musical collaborators to present some very special music, woven together to tell a story of many dimensions.

You can book tickets here! And read more here.