AXIOM, led by founding director Jeffrey Milarsky and dedicated to performing the masterworks of the 20th and 21st centuries, opens its season Friday, November 1, 2019, at 7:30pm in Alice Tully Hall.
AXIOM will perform Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo (1920) with clarinetist Hanlin Chen, Three Japanese Lyrics (1912-13) with soprano Libby Sokolowski, Élégie for Solo Viola (1944) with violist Lisa Sung, and Pribaoutki (1914) with baritone Kyle Miller; Takemitsu’s Archipelago S. (1993); and Birtwistle’s Silbury Air (1977).
Tickets for AXIOM concerts are free and available at juilliard.edu/calendar.
On programming the November 1 concert, Milarsky said, “The overarching idea is of Igor Stravinsky as a kind of godfather of modern music. We have two pieces of his composed 25 years apart: the Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo and the Élégie for Solo Viola, which is a somber piece and very sad. Writing a solo clarinet piece, a solo viola piece—there’s probably nothing more difficult. You’re completely exposed.”
The program will also feature two sets of Stravinsky’s songs that aren’t often performed. Milarsky added, “The Three Japanese Lyrics, which are about the coming of spring—they’re the earliest pieces on the program, minimalist and really coloristic. Then you have these wonderful nonsense rhymes [Pribaoutki]. The Stravinsky pieces are going to lead into each other, two mini-pillars in each half supporting two big pieces, Toru Takemitsu’s Archipelago S. in the first, and Harrison Birtwistle’s Silbury Air in the second.”
Photo by Richard Termine.
