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Cosmic Greetings Echo in Barbican Performance
2 Nov
Summary
- Caroline Shaw's 'The Listeners' premiered in London.
- Voyager's Golden Record greetings formed part of the performance.
- Randall Goosby delivered a notable performance of Barber's Violin Concerto.
The Barbican hosted the London premiere of Caroline Shaw's "The Listeners," a work inspired by the Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecraft. This 35-minute piece incorporates spoken greetings in 55 languages and Carl Sagan's "pale blue dot" speech, weaving them into musical passages that range from simple harmonies to sweeping choral phrases. The performance, featuring mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean and baritone Florian Störtz with the BBC Symphony Chorus, aimed to capture a sense of wonder.
The concert also presented earlier works, beginning with Borys Lyatoshynsky's "Grazhyna," a dramatic tone poem from 1955. Violinist Randall Goosby offered a highly praised performance of Barber's Violin Concerto, concluding with a lively encore of Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson's "Louisiana Blues Strut."
