The inaugural concert of the 58th International Festival Wratislavia Cantans be conducted by Christoph Eschenbach. The programme features compositions by Tan Dun, Krzysztof Penderecki and Ludwig van Beethoven, reflecting the ideas that correspond to the theme of this year’s festival – Mother Nature.

“In the beginning, when people began to consciously create music, they were looking for a way to talk to nature, communicate with birds and wind. Looking at ancient examples of Chinese music, one can find many compositions that imitate the sounds of nature, specifically birds. With this in mind, I decided to start with six ancient Chinese instruments: guzheng, suona, erhu, pipa, dizi and sheng, to try to recreate, using them, the timbre of the sounds I composed,” says the Chinese conductor and composer Tan Dun about his work Passacaglia: Secret of Winds and Birds. The piece, written a few years ago, is therefore a tribute to the millennia-old desire of humans to be able to communicate with nature. The Passacaglia consists of variations in which the artist interweaves various structures, colours, harmonies and textures, crowned with an effective climax symbolising the sound of the Phoenix.

The Cosmogony for solo voices, mixed choir and orchestra by Krzysztof Penderecki is a story replete with reflections on the creation of the world. The composer wove into its material many significant quotations from various periods in the history of the West – words from the writings of Leonardo da Vinci, Nicolaus Copernicus, Ovid, and Sophocles.

The evening will end with the Symphony No. 6 in F major op. 68 “Pastoral”, the first sounds of which Ludwig van Beethoven outlined during his stay in the idyllic surroundings of Heiligenstadt and Baden. The charming environment in which he stayed had a strong impact on the score and the final shape of the work. Each of the movements has a programmatic title – The awakening of serene feelings after arriving in the countryside, Scene by the stream or The storm. However, Beethoven was not so much interested in reflecting the reality he perceived, but in showing the very desire to return to nature. He imitated sounds of nature in the score: the quail is sonically depicted by the oboe, the cuckoo by the clarinet, and the sounds of village dance are represented by the imitation of playing the bagpipes.