The second concert in the OPUS IV series, which took place on Tuesday evening at the Arts and Letters Club, had a similar structure to Sunday evening. The concert was anchored around a major, well known, work. In this case Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata with the rest of the programme featuring less familiar material. It was given by the same five instrumentalists as Sunday; Stella Chen and Isabella Perron – violins, Matthew Lipman – viola, Brannon Cho – cello and Kevin Ahfat – piano.
Probably pretty much everyone is familiar with Géricault’s painting Le Radeau de la Méduse, depicting scenes of horror after a shipwreck. The story behind it is much less well known. The year is 1816 and a French expedition is off to reoccupy Senegal which had been occupied by the British during the recent wars. The flagship of the expedition is the frigate La Méduse, which carries the governor and his staff and so on. Well ahead of the rest of the flotilla, and out of sight, La Méduse runs aground and is eventually abandoned. The governor, the officers and other nobs take to the boats towing the rest of the crew (154 men and boys) on a hastily improvised raft. Finding progress too slow after 24 hours they cut the raft adrift. When the raft is finally spotted fifteen men are still alive. A fitting allegory for the Bourbon restoration perhaps. Continue reading
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