ABOUT US
Mitteleuropa, center of Europe, crossroads of many cultures.
“Under its protective wing, oppressive and fascinating at the same time, the great Austro-Hungarian empire brought together cultures struggling against the loss of their identity. This resistance includes a love of the forbidden mother tongue. His attentiveness and incessant study of folk themes characterize the distinctive world of composers such as Janáček, Mahler and Martinů. Interpreting them means first and foremost working on your relationship with language.
Further east, it’s a story of transmission. Music says what cannot be described. In all the regimes Russia is going through, there is terror but also, beyond that, a force that sometimes implodes, sometimes explodes. What is said is said for all those who do not have the floor. Attracted by this double resistance – one to remember her language, the other to recount the forbidden – she has become an artist.
magnetized by this place in the world to which I return, tirelessly, I listened again to works I knew and loved, and discovered others, written for voice, choir, violin, orchestra and piano. I called on Franck Krawczyk to help me find a path through them or, in the case of Janáček, to draw inspiration from them.
I chose a string orchestra to create the depth and tension of Rachmaninov’s Vespers and the intensity of Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky, and to bring out the virtuosity of the dances and rhythmic pieces. In this way, the road we follow will take us from a tragic song to a lullaby, from a lied recounting a dream to a dance with gypsy accents, as if we were letting ourselves be led by the chapters of the same story.”
MUSIC
Erno Dohnányi, Ruralia Hungarica (orch. F. Krawczyk) Andante rubato, alla zingaresca – Presto
Traditional Jewish song, Song in memory of Schubert (arr. S. Wieder-Atherton, orch. F. Krawczyk)
Alexander Cherepnin, Tatar Dance (orch. F. Krawczyk)
Franck Krawczyk, Jeux d’enfants n°7 after Janáček’s Moravian Folksongs
Sergei Prokofiev, The Field of the Dead (Alexander Nevsky) courtesy of Éditions du Chant du Monde
Bohuslav Martinů, Variations on a Slavic theme (arr. J.Telm) by permission of the Martinů Foundation
Gustav Malher, Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen, Rückert-Lieder
MORE videos
Track List
credits & thanks
CONCEPTION, MUSICAL DIRECTION & CELLO
Sonia Wieder-Atherton
MUSICAL COLLABORATION
Franck Krawczyk
WITH
Niguna Ensemble
PHOTO & VIDEO CREDITS
Excerpts from Chantal Akerman’s film “À l’Est avec Sonia Wieder-Atherton” & DR
