Harmony Beyond Music: Beyond Black & White

Beyond Black and White is part of Harmony Beyond Music: a series of concerts and podcasts exploring themes of equality and diversity. Performed by Reiko Fujisawa and Ofer Falk, the concerts are introduced by Peter Quantrill. 

Music has never been written, performed or appreciated in a bubble. It engages with the time and place of its composition and performance. Racial and social justice, political and gender oppression, the struggle for freedom and recognition of the individual: music illuminates these themes as a mirror of its time. Harmony Beyond Music features composers whose work is only now emerging from obscurity caused by their social status and the privileges of the white, male or wealthy. The series also explores the relationship between harmonic language and political progress and shows how music can protest against dictatorship and represent shouts of joy in the face of oppression. 

Beyond Black and White  

Perhaps the most celebrated freedom fighter in classical music was Beethoven. He wrote the mighty ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata for the black virtuoso George Bridgetower, and on the scale of a concerto, a world away from the 18th-century charm of Joseph Boulogne’s sonata for lords and ladies. Two pieces by black American composers of our time remind us that making music in the chamber sphere is an act of constant dialogue both between musicians and with the world at large. 

Programme 

Joseph Boulogne, le Chevalier de Saint-Georges: Violin Sonata in G minor op.1b no.3 

Jessie Montgomery: Peace for violin and piano 

William Grant Still: Suite for violin and piano 

Interval 

Beethoven: ‘Kreutzer’ Violin Sonata 

Performers 

Ofer Falk, violin 

Reiko Fujisawa, piano 

with introductions and insights from Peter Quantrill