Reflections

SAARIAHO – Mirrors for flute and cello
MORRIS – Collision Etudes for solo oboe
CHILD – Occasions for violin and viola
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS – Quintet for clarinet, horn, violin, cello and piano

Radius opens its twenty-fourth season with a group of Reflections, featuring Kaija Saariaho’s Mirrors (1997). Saariaho invites her performers (flute and cello) to “build and play [their] own version” of the piece by “combining pre-defined fragments” to create a new whole. In essence, she invites her interpreters to “begin anywhere,” to find their own path through the work’s whirlwind of sonic beauty, poised on the boundary of music and sound. Reflections change from the sonic to the visual in Alyssa Morris’s Collision Etudes for solo oboe (2017), a virtuosic and playful showcase inspired by paintings by contemporary American women. In Occasions (2018) for violin and viola,  Boston-based composer Peter Child dedicates a set of musical “greeting cards” to his fellow local composers and performers. Radius closes the evening with a richly textured Quintet for clarinet, horn, violin, cello, and piano by the lyrical English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.