Musical Postcards from Around the World - NOSPR

This concert is a musical journey through countries, periods and styles. For many composers, such ‘postcards’ were a way of capturing the sounds encountered on their travels – a record of unforgettable moments and inspirations gathered along the way. For others, they were more like a game of musical chameleon, offering the sheer pleasure of adopting different styles and sounds. The result is an extraordinarily varied programme, full of dance rhythms, humour and a touch of the exotic.

Music has always crossed borders. Melodies travel from country to country, dances take on new meanings, and composers eagerly draw on sounds they have heard elsewhere in the world. Very often, these become the starting point for creating a musical language of their own. It is precisely from such encounters that works emerge which tell us as much about the places themselves as about the way composers perceived them.

In his cycle En tournant la T.S.F., Alexandre Tansman turns the radio into an atlas of musical idioms from different corners of Europe and America. It is a sparkling sequence of miniatures depicting a world that was becoming increasingly easy to hear, even if it was still not so easy to see. Maurycy Moszkowski and Johannes Brahms, by contrast, are more interested in the ways in which dance and rhythm can shape musical identity. Spain, Poland and Hungary become sources of energy, distinctive melodic turns and musical expression.

Against this background, the works of Marta Mołodyńska-Wheeler, a composer, pianist and synesthete, sound particularly intriguing. In her Poligrajki, dance traditions from different cultures meet free of historical constraints. The krakowiak encounters ragtime, while the fandango meets the csárdás, placing familiar idioms in entirely new contexts. Her Concert Suite, meanwhile, brings together elements particularly close to the composer’s heart: lyrical melodies, the freedom of jazz and sophisticated harmony. Its contrasting movements form a coherent narrative whose defining feature is constant change. Finally, Fazıl Say will take us through streets he knows well in Winter Morning in Istanbul. Turkey’s largest city is a place etched in his memory – full of movement and contrasts.

Although each of these compositions speaks in its own language, they all share the conviction that music develops through encounters – with tradition, other cultures, memory and imagination. It is from such encounters that works emerge which do not seek to contain the world in sound, but allow us to see it from a new perspective.

Recommended age: 4+