Synopsis:

While modern music has rightly been considered in many ways as breaking away from the musical past, it certainly has not fully escaped the influence of what has come before. Juxtaposing three modern works for violin-viola duo by composers Quincy Porter, Augusta Read Thomas and Darius Milhaud against Mozart's Duo in G major, K.423. Silent Moon explores the subtle stylistic relationships between composers who worked (or are working) more than a century apart. The evening will also feature poetry readings that are curated by local writers Audrey Tan and Julius Li, which trace analogous stylistic relationships in the literary arts. Through interplay of the selected poems' rhythm, form and content alongside the pieces of the concert programme, the performance invites the audience to consider to what extent music may be considered in parallel to speech, recapturing an 18th-century European aesthetic that was widely understood in Mozart's day and bringing it into contact with the present.

Programme

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Duo in G Major for violin and viola, K. 423 (1783)

I. Allegro

II. Adagio

III. Rondeau (Allegro)

Darius Milhaud, Sonatine for violin and viola, Op. 226 (1941)

I. Décidé

II. Lent

III. Fugue (Vif)

Augusta Read Thomas, Silent Moon (2006)

I. Still: Soulful and Resonant

II. Energetic: Majestic and Dramatic

III. Suspended: Lyrical and Chant-like — "When twofold silence was the song of love."

Quincy Porter; Duo For Violin and Viola (1952-54)

I. Allegretto

II. Lento

III. Allegro molto

Music performed by:

Tan Tiag Yi (Violin)

Cindy Ow (Viola)

Poetry curated by:

Audrey Tan

Julius Li