Lucerne Festival Academy 5

Four strong female voices! In Semafor, one of her last scores, the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, who died in 2023, develops a colorful canvas from “obsessive octave sounds” and “glissando screams” that bring to mind “a busy Manhattan intersection at rush hour” (New York Classical Review). You will also get to encounter three female composers of the younger generation. Yang Song from China aims to transfer folk music elements into a contemporary musical language and was inspired by the overtone singing of the Xhosa people in South Africa. Hannah Kendall, a Briton with South American-Caribbean roots, addresses the suffering of the African diaspora by adding walkie-talkies and jukeboxes to the ensemble sound: in addition to Bible verses, we hear well-known melodies by Mozart, Beethoven & Co. that were composed at the time of the plantation systems. Finally, in frames II, Iranian composer Elnaz Seyedi juxtaposes massive tutti chords with chamber music passages in which the performers are given great creative freedom.