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- Rebecca Saunders
thirst (2026)
(for eighteen strings and conductor)- Henry Litolff’s Verlag GmbH & Co. KG (World)
Commissioned by Südwestrundfunk, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Ensemble Resonanz, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ Amsterdam, Klangspuren Schwaz, and with support from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation
Commissioner exclusivity applies
- 8vn.4va.4vc.2(5-string)db
- 32 min
- 18th October 2026, Bartók Saal
- 29th November 2026, Town Hall, Huddersfield, United Kingdom
Programme Note
thirst n. & v.
desire or crave, long, urge, drive, impulse, pressure, keen, lust, rapture, madness, wish, want, sigh, cry, gape, gasp, pine, pant, languish, yearn, long, allure, whet, provoke, excite.
thirst is both a biological imperative, a primal alert, and a metaphor for the human condition, for the insatiable search for connection, meaning and understanding.
We need art, society needs art, like a body needs its lungs to heave and breathe, and it´s heart to pump blood through its veins.
Music as both physical and existential. It gets under our skin and takes us to the essence of feeling and thought. It lights up the surface of our lives, but also exposes the cracks in the veneer, takes us beneath the superficial surface, into hidden depths.
Music reaches into our soul and invites us to feel, move, succumb, think, observe, question and resist.
It can be pure passion, but is also capable of expressing an extraordinary fragile vunerability: the exquisite imperfection that makes us human.
Rebecca Saunders, July 2026