Echoes of Eden

Hugo Ticciati & O/Modernt Chamber Orchestra

A return visit for Hugo Ticciati’s brilliant young Swedish chamber orchestra, with a programme that makes startling connections between music old and new. Tavener‘s radiant Mother of God quotes Schubert’s Ave Maria; Lera Auerbach refashions Pergolesi’s vocal masterpiece as a ‘concerto grosso’ for violin and viola; Philip Glass‘s Echorus is a hypnotic passacaglia that sounds anything but baroque. Even John Lennon‘s Across the Universe uses an ancient Sanskrit mantra. In among the meditations, two dramatic masterpieces in Bach‘s harrowing aria, and Pärt‘s Fall and rebirth.

Hildegard von Bingen Vos flores rosarum
J. S. Bach Erbarme dich (Have mercy) from St Matthew Passion
John Tavener Mother of God
Philip Glass Echorus for two violins and strings
Lera Auerbach Dream of the Stabat Mater
Arvo Pärt Fratres for violin and strings
John Lennon Blackbird and Across the Universe

Artists: Reto Bieri, Sascha Bota, Luciana Mancini, Priya Mitchell, O/Modernt Chamber Orchestra, Nora Thiele, Hugo Ticciati

Every year the Oxford Chamber Music Festival brings together some of the most exciting classical musicians in Europe to live and play together for a week. Creative sparks fly as the players exchange musical partners and tackle the widest variety of sound-worlds.

“World-class” Time Out

With this year’s special 25th anniversary festival we hope to evoke a musical Eden in an increasingly troubled world. We celebrate in sound the glories of nature’s garden; explore the music of innocence and of human desire; and offer works which suggest the drama of the Fall, and the journey back to a state of spiritual grace.