Monday at Last with Strings

Monday at Last is the concert concept in which Cecilia Zilliacus and Kati Raitinen invite guest artists to join them in programmes that combine new and older music, often in close interaction with the audience. At this Monday concert, they form a quintet together with violinist Liza Ferschtman and violists Susanja Nielsen and Albin Uusijärvi.

The British composer Vaughan Williams had a deep affection for the viola, and his Phantasy Quintet is built around a theme in the viola part. His interest in English folk music and the Renaissance also shines through. Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy had an extraordinary gift for melody, as we hear in this quintet, both reflective and full of life.

In contrast to these quintets, both rooted in the European chamber music tradition, we hear music in smaller formations from musical New York. Jessie Montgomery grew up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and draws inspiration from jazz, African American spirituals, hip hop and rock. She is also a violinist with a grounding in the classical tradition – clearly evident in this rhapsody for solo violin, which in many ways recalls a partita by Johann Sebastian Bach.

A sense of classical beauty emerges in American-Dutch composer Vanessa Lann’s moonshadow sunshadow, where two violins follow one another in gestures of luminous beauty, high up in the instrument’s very highest register.