kamara.hu/2 – Night Presented by Liszt Academy

Night is not only dark but multicoloured. It is full of beauty and secrets, it is both alluring and scary, pleasantly quiet and chillingly silent. We hear the rustling of nocturnal wildlife, bump into ghosts, marvel at the moon and launch into a serenade. No wonder then how so many composers have been inspired by this part of the day. Chopin is one of the principal characters in the second kamara.hu concert. A few songs by his great favourite, Bellini, signal the start of the concert, then there is a performance of a nocturne (music of the night) by the Pole in an arrangement by Henning Kraggerud. The other grand master of Italian bel canto, Donizetti, is also represented: the harp solo in Lucia di Lammermoor evokes a night-time murder by the lakeside. Chopin’s sonata for cello and piano is linked to Antal Szerb’s novel Journey by Moonlight with its sense of melancholy, nostalgia, hope, dignity and inner strength, whereas in the case of the grandiose chamber work of Schubert it is the internal exile from society that the composer always experienced that associates it most closely to the novel’s hero.