site.btaSofia Music Weeks Festival Presents Baroque Music with Four Elements Concert

56th Sofia Music Weeks International Festival will trap The Four Elements between four walls and everyone is invited to witness this on Monday evening at the Military Club in Sofia, the music festival organizers said on Monday.

"The audience can expect a remarkable concert by a star-studded ensemble of national and international performers united by the theme of the four elements - water, air, fire and earth and their palpable philosophical and rhetorical significance in the music of the late Renaissance and Baroque. The musical journey will begin with Telemann's Water Music, through Bach's cantata Swift, swift, you swirling winds, then on to the symbolism of fire in Monteverdi's Madrigals and descriptions of the earth and the elements in Rameau's The Amorous Indies, to Henry Purcell's arias. The programme provides a palette of compositional and stylistic interpretations of each of these four elements," the organisers added.

“The surprise in the series comes from the presence of a fifth element, namely ether, which in the context of alchemy represents the union of the four elements. Their fusion appears as the key to attaining the philosopher's stone, the “lapis philosophorum”. Apart from the whole Renaissance-Baroque carousel, the programme has a contemporary highlight, specially written for chamber orchestra The Angel of the Four Elements by Atanas Atanasov based on Catalan poet Hector Vila’s text,” the festival organizers said.

The performing line-up consists of Oleg Chukhlib (Germany, Ukraine) – lute, Maria Radoeva – mezzo-soprano, Plamena Girginova – soprano, Georgi Beykov – bass, Atanas Atanassov – harpsichord, and Baroque Ensemble Tutti soli with conductor Virginia Atanassova. A ballet with choreographer Svetlin Ivelinov will also take over the stage whose design is by Penka Kazandjieva.