SATARSA M. Shalygin
Where Every Verse is Filled with Grief A. Schnittke (arr. M. Shalygin)

Why only play and listen to what we know and understand? Isn’t it more exciting to look for and encounter new things? How thrilling it is when we do not understand. How special it is to create something from scratch and to be part of the process. As musicians. As an audience. Together with our public, we want to explore and discover old and new works and get involved in the creation of new concert forms, where we seek a deeper experience of music-making in combination with different art forms because unity makes us stronger. Palindrome – lights, mirrors, shadows, words, numbers, sentences, or verses, come together to create the most atmospheric music-making… new music, old instruments, new feelings, old beliefs… a new voice coming out of the old metal strings, all of us together giving life to something precious and dear: SATARSA.

“Palindromes in music are just as normal as the Fibonacci numbers in the structure of leaves on the trees. Therefore, when I read the story of Cortazar “Satarsa”, I immediately felt the mysterious musical currently in it. Surprisingly, for more than 15 years, I periodically return to his unusually rich work and find sources of inspiration for myself. My SATARSA is a desert of pleasure. A desert with gardens of paradise, crooked mirrors and an endless horizon, from which the melodies of our past lives are heard.” – Maxim Shalygin

Unquestionably one of the choral masterpieces of the 20th century, Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto for Mixed Chorus (1984/5) is an extended setting of words taken from ‘The Book of Lamentations’ by the Armenian monk Grigor Narekatsi (951-1003). The second movement of the concert is reborn in this special arrangement made by Shalygin for the Kamerorkest van het Noorden in the beauty of the sound of 15-string players. The choir concerto of Schnittke is one of my favourite pieces in music history and the arrangement of the ‘Where every verse is filled with grief’ (part II) proved to be another bond with this great composer.” – Maxim Shalygin.