On October 1 the latest piece by Bryce Dessner, his Violin Concerto, will be premiered by Frankfurt Radio Symphony and violinist Pekka Kuusisto and conducted by Ariane Matiakh.
Taking inspiration from collaborator Anne Carson and the natural world, the Violin Concerto by Dessner will receive its much anticipated world premiere on October 1 in Frankfurt. Another regular collaborator, violinist Pekka Kuusisto takes the solo role accompanied by Frankfurt Radio Symphony. Further commissioned performances include the Philharmonia Orchestra with Santtu-Matias Rouvali on October 3 in London’s Royal Festival Hall then to San Francisco on October 21, where Dessner and Kuusisto are collaborative partners, conducted by Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen. Salonen then brings the work back to Europe with the Orchestre de Paris on December 8 and 9.
Dessner says of the work “My Violin Concerto was partly inspired by Anne Carson’s essay ‘The Anthropology of Water’, which re-imagines the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. I now live in the Basque region of France, just beyond the Spanish border on the Atlantic coast which sits directly on the pilgrimage route. In Carson’s essay, a modern young woman walks the Camino del Santiago. Each diary entry opens with a date, a place on the pilgrimage route (many villages are near where we live) and a quote from an earlier literary pilgrim (Mitsune, Basho..). “
