April 4, Saturday 8:00 pm
First Pres Santa Monica

Going to the limits of extreme performance and sensuality.

Igor Stravinsky
  The Rite of Spring, piano 4-hands version (1913)

Olivier Messiaen
  Harawi for soprano and piano (1945)

Danny Holt & Steven Vanhauwaert, piano
Elissa Johnston, soprano & Vicki Ray, piano

The final piano dress before The Rite of Spring premiere was still a madhouse. The dancers were loudly counting while two agitated men sharing a piano bench tried to imitate what would  become the 20th century’s most notorious orchestral score. Stravinsky’s act of daring duo virtuosity and the intimate physicality of piano 4-hands take us into a ritual dance that ends in annihilation. For Messiaen The Rite of Spring and Tristan und Isolde were sources of inspiration for this song-cycle. The spellbinding exploration of sacrifice, Harawi, is sung in the absurd French of surrealist poets, the Quechua tongue of Peru, and a made-up onomatopoetic language that Messiaen braided into an emotionally extreme tour de force. Harawi is pagan, violent and sensual. Only the bravest soprano and most indefatigable pianist can meet its challenge.