Closing Statements

How composers draw their creative lives to a close continues to fascinate. Are their final works the culmination of all that has gone before or suggest what might have come next? Did illness enhance their profundity or diminish their powers? Can we listen to such pieces without thinking of them as some kind of message from beyond the grave? The music featured on this fascinating program from violinist Sophie Rosa and pianist Ian Buckle each suggest different answers to these questions and challenges some preconceptions. In their last years, Robert Schumann (1810-1856) and Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) both continued to be inspired by musicians around them. Schumann in post-revolutionary Germany and Schoenberg in post-war America looked back to classical models, to reinvigorate, even lighten, their compositional approach. That sense of playing with history is also evident in the music of Ukrainian composer Valentyn Silvestrov (b. 1937), who has claimed: "I do not write new music. My music is a response to, and an echo of what already exists."

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