ergon ensemble
contemporary music, athens
icones Peter Maxwell Davies
11, February 2014
at Megaron Concert Hall
Conducted by: Kasper de Roo
Singer: Artemis Bogri, soprano
Dancer: Tassos Karachalios
Solo cello: Antonis Pratsinakis
ERGON ENSEMBLE
Direction - Choreography - Set design: Konstantinos Rigos
Αrtistic coordinator: Alexandros Mouzas
Program
Peter Maxwell Davies
Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot, opus 60
(Music-theatre work for soprano or mezzo-soprano and instrumental ensemble
Libretto by Randoph Stow)
Vesalii icones, opus 42
Music-theatre work for dancer, solo cello and instrumental ensemble
Vesalii Icones, is one of Peter Maxwell Davies's supreme achievements. An extraordinarily allusive, multilayered fusion of dance and music, tracing a pilgrimage around the Stations of the Cross on a series of the 16th-century anatomical drawings by Vesalius, with a dancer and a solo cellist as the protagonists.
This new production, presented by ERGON ENSEMBLE and choreographed by Konstantinos Rigos, incorporates new technological advances, by placing a camera next to the dancer, to follow his every movement. Not only the human body, but also the human soul and passion of Christ unfolds in front of the audience, while Peter Maxwell Davies’s powerful music, performed by the cellist and the ensemble, guides his steps.
Vesalii icones is paired with Miss Donnithornes’ Maggot.
A tour de force of vocal effects, it is the female equivalent of the Mad King, though Miss Donnithorne is generally more "singing" in her madness than King George the third.
In this dramatized version of the work Konstantinos Rigos places the unfortunate lady in her bedroom, where she lives in company with her delusions.