The Ravinia Festival will present two firsts on its August 26 program: the première of David Lang's Pulitzer Prize-winning the little match girl passion, and the debut of Chicago-based contemporary music ensemble eighth blackbird.
The Lang work is scored for four vocalists, who accompany themselves on various percussion instruments. It is based on the familiar Hans Christian Andersen story of a little girl selling matches on the street during a bitterly cold winter night. She lights each match and sees comforting visions in their glow.
When the last match goes out, the little girl dies.
Music critic Tim Page, a juror on the panel that awarded Lang the 2008 Pulitzer, has said, "I don't think I've ever been so moved by a new, and largely unheralded, composition as I was by David Lang's little match girl passion, which is unlike any music I know."
David Lang is co-founder and co-artistic director of the Bang on a Can new music collective in New York. He has been described as a post-minimalist composer, but he employs a variety of disparate elements in his complex works.
Listeners may hear echoes of medieval Christmas carols in some of the vocal music in little match girl, evident in this excerpt from the piece.
The term "passion" implies a very specific story, a re-telling of Jesus Christ's suffering and death on the cross. In these stories, "passion" refers to Christ's agony.
David Lang has said that he was inspired, in part, by Bach's St. Matthew Passion to write a piece in which the suffering of Jesus is equated to the suffering of the little match girl.
The vocalist/percussionists on the Ravinia program include: Elissa Johnston, soprano; Adriana Manfredi, mezzo-soprano; Grant Gershon, tenor; and Cedric Berry, bass-baritone.
eighth blackbird's program will include these broken wings, a work that Lang wrote expressly for the group.
Click HERE for more information and tickets to this August 26 performance at Ravinia, located north of Chicago in Highland Park, Ill.
