Tung Auditorium: Liverpool

BBN: ‘Life Episodes’ – Edmund Finnis, Bartók and Beethoven

BBN: Life Episodes brings together new work from Edmund Finnis with music by Beethoven and Bartók, and beautiful filmed testimonies created by Jessie Rodger, to produce a one-off music-film event, portraying survival, healing and rejuvenation.

The third movement of Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 132 was written while convalescing after a serious illness in 1824-25. He wrote this slow movement entitled ‘Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen a die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart’ as a hymn of thanks to God for his recovery, praising his reawakened life.

Edmund Finnis has used this profoundly uplifting movement as the inspiration for his Quartet No. 3, ‘Devotions’. This newest string quartet is written for the Solem Quartet.

Completing the musical programme is Bartók’s brooding Quartet No. 2. This work was written in three parts, described by the composer’s friend and colleague Zoltán Kodály as “life episodes”.

Interwoven with the musical programme, to reflect and enhance its message, will be films made by Jessie Rodger featuring four moving portraits of people who tell their own remarkable stories of overcoming adversity.

BBN: Life Episodes is part of the Solem Quartet’s Beethoven Bartók Now series.