Death and the Maiden Revealed

Touring to Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Sydney and Brisbane. Tickets from $49, or $35 for under 35s and $30 for students.

“Electrifying… Kopatchinskaja crouched, bobbed and weaved. At the final, explosive note the audience sprang to its feet.” – New York Times

Her body and her instrument and the music she makes all seem one. She is ever thrilling and alive to the moment. — Los Angeles Times

Patricia Kopatchinskaja (aka PatKop) is experimental, unpredictable and brilliant. For her, music is alive and made in the moment, and as an acclaimed soloist, reinventive director and ground-breaking composer, she creates an ephemeral magic that can never be replicated.

Kopatchinskaja is happiest with an ensemble that likes to blur lines and push boundaries, so the ACO is a natural home.

She returns after more than a decade to direct the Orchestra in a program that showcases her dynamic virtuosity and enormous range, from Ravel’s showpiece Tzigane, to Schubert’s semi-autobiographical Death and the Maiden arranged for string orchestra.

This remarkable work represents Schubert’s grappling with impending death. Schubert’s maiden is beautiful, young, and determined to live. Death is resolute, alluring, comforting and kind. Their conversation is filled with tenderness and melancholy, resulting in music that is at once heartbreaking and reassuring.

Interspersed will be the world premiere of PatKop’s Danses Macabre. This illuminating and provocative new work reflects, from a contemporary perspective, on darkness and deception while also exploring the relief and mercy of death.

National Tour Partner

Program

Maurice Ravel (arr. violin, strings and percussion) Tzigane
Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber Battalia à 10
PatKop Danses Macabre (World Premiere)
Franz Schubert (arr. PatKop) String Quartet No.14 in D minor, D.810 “Death and the Maiden”

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