Bonus Tracks

Initiated by Markus Poschner and the Sinfonieorchester Basel, this season sees the premiere of the ‘Bonus Tracks’: short commissioned compositions that relate directly to key programme highlights. The initial idea was to create fresh approaches to well-known musical works. This was followed by the concept: to comment on, reflect upon and provide a counterpoint to these very works – within the same artistic form. Now, three world premieres are on the programme, each serving as a contemporary reflection on a work from the subscription programme.

With μ-Cephei, the Basel-based Polish composer Anna Sowa establishes a direct link to the Habsburg Empire, the downfall of which is powerfully explored in Maurice Ravel’s La Valse. Sowa broadens our perspective from an empire that, from a human standpoint at the time, seemed colossal, out into the cosmos, thereby revealing the historical significance of earthly events from a completely new angle. μ-Cephei, the title of her work, refers to a celestial body belonging to the class of so-called giant stars, also known as ‘red giants’: stars glowing red, swollen to up to a hundred times their original volume, and on the verge of dying out.

Geoffrey Gordon’s ‘Bonus Track’ Salt is intended as a complement to his clarinet concerto Icarus, which is to receive its world premiere in Basel. The British-American composer says: “The myth of Icarus is well known. If you fly too close to the sun, your (wax) wings will melt. But Daedalus issued a further warning to his son Icarus: if you fly too close to the surface of the sea, the salty sea foam will wet your feathers – with the same disastrous consequences.’

According to the composer, Helena Winkelman’s After the Hunt: The Heavens is “about the age-old theme of the hunt, of eating and being eaten”. Her piece depicts a chase with “maximum adrenaline”. Winkelman’s composition draws on Richard Strauss’s Heldenleben and is performed in concert before this tone poem. The massive orchestral apparatus for which Strauss wrote is already brought into play in her relatively short piece. This presents a challenge for the Swiss composer, who, with her ‘bonus track’, promises not only to stand out but also to preserve the heroic spirit.

All concerts will be conducted by Principal Conductor Markus Poschner.