TIME’S ECHO LIVE is a two-day festival of words and music exploring music’s power and promise as a bridge to eras past. Led by author and critic Jeremy Eichler, it consists of four programs (details below), each of which spotlight a single composer, opening up their life and art across the years of the Second World War and probing their unique approach to musical memory. Each program will also introduce new perspectives on the art of listening, and will feature a live performance by members of the Borromeo String Quartet and friends. Please join us for any combination of individual programs, or for an expansive journey across all four events.

 

A limited number of tickets are available here (UPDATE: These events are sold out)

Saturday events are listed below — for Sunday events, please see Day Two

 

Day One: Saturday, October 28

 

I. Air of Another Planet: Arnold Schoenberg and the Meanings of Dissonance

(Saturday, October 28th at 4pm)

Words: Decades before Schoenberg’s expulsion from Nazi Germany, the composer had described art as “the cry of distress uttered by those who experience firsthand the fate of mankind.” This program provides an introduction to the festival as a whole while also exploring the meaning of Schoenberg’s extraordinary journey: from the son of a Jewish shoe manufacturer in Vienna to a Lutheran convert intent on revolutionizing German music, from a political activist determined to avert the great European catastrophe to the creator of the first major musical memorial to the Holocaust.

Music: Arnold Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht (“Transfigured Night”) for string sextet, Op. 4

Performers:

Nicholas Kitchen, violin
Kristopher Tong, violin
Nicholas Cords, viola
Luther Warren, viola
Leland Ko, cello
Yeesun Kim, cello

 

II. In Memoriam: Richard Strauss at the End of German Music

(Saturday, October 28th at 6pm)

Words: By his final years Richard Strauss saw himself, not without reason, as the last mountain in the vast mountain range of German music stretching back to Bach. When Hitler came to power, Strauss chose to remain in the country and forge a partnership of opportunity with the Nazi party, until falling from its official graces in 1935. Our second program traces Strauss’s morally fraught wartime journey and plumbs the mysterious depths of his extraordinary musical memorial, Metamorphosen, a response to the tragic collapse of German music by a composer who was both its final representative and an intimate witness to its downfall.

Music: Strauss, Metamorphosen, to be heard in a new arrangement for string sextet by Nicholas Kitchen.

Performers:

Nicholas Kitchen, violin
Kristopher Tong, violin
Nicholas Cords, viola
Luther Warren, viola
Leland Ko, cello
Yeesun Kim, cello

 

A limited number of tickets are available here

For Sunday events, please see Day Two