Humanity and Nature

Two composers who share a fascination with ecology take centre stage tonight. This is not an interest without engagement: in the Anthropocene, humans have become a geological force that threatens the Earth’s ecosystem. Two works by Kate Moore will be performed: the poignant Days and Nature from 2012, and a brand new work. In There is no one, not even the wind by John Luther Adams, the music itself has become a landscape. Detlef van Vuuren, professor of Global Environmental Change, explains the scientific context in a lecture. The New European Ensemble resplendently sounds the alarm bell in this programme.

In Days and Nature, Kate Moore uses a music machine created by Dutch artist Peter van Loon to underline that an ecosystem is also a finely tuned ‘machine’. She captures in sound the growth of a tree, from a fragile trunk to a forest giant with wide-spreading foliage. There is no one, not even the wind... (2017) by John Luther Adams is a meditation on the emptiness and loneliness of the desert, but it’s not difficult to listen to this intensely melancholic music; an elegy to nature.

This concert will be broadcast live by NTR on NPO Klassiek



Programma booklet (Dutch)