November 2011
'Up-close' released on DVD and Download
Sol Gabetta
The fourth and latest release on the Disquiet label is Michel van der Aa’s concerto for cello, string ensemble and film, Up-Close. It is performed on the recording by its dedicatees, the Argentinean cellist Sol Gabetta and the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, who have already played the piece to great acclaim around Europe. The role of the elderly lady in the filmed segments is played by Vakil Eelman.
Up-Close has been released on DVD and HD movie download, and is available to order from your local record shop, or from the Disquiet web-store.
During its premiere tour in March this year, critics in six countries described it as “brilliant, sensuous and virtuosic”, “riveting”, and “hautingly beautiful”. See what they were talking about through this trailer:
August 2011
Happy first birthday to Disquiet!
Disquiet
Disquiet, the multimedia label set up in 2010 by Michel van der Aa, celebrates its first birthday on 28th August.
The label’s successful first year has seen its first three releases – CDs of Spaces of Blank and the Here trilogy, and a DVD of Van der Aa’s first video opera, One – receive rave reviews across Europe. The UK’s Gramophone magazine described the Here Trilogy as “a major achievement in recent European music,” and praised the two CDs for their “uniformly excellent” sound and “detailed” and “stylish” presentation.
But turning one is just a beginning, and this autumn will see Disquiet grow in several exciting directions.
read more
June 2011
UK premiere 'Spaces of Blank'
BBC Symphony Orchestra
London’s Spitalfields Summer Festival will host the UK premiere of Michel van der Aa’s Spaces of Blank on 18 June 2011. The internationally acclaimed singer Stephanie Marshall will appear at the elegant Christ Church Spitalfields venue, supported by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Lawrence Renes.
A 30-minute song cycle for mezzo-soprano, orchestra and soundtrack, Spaces of Blank sets texts by Emily Dickinson, Rozalie Hirs and Anne Carson to construct a virtual journey through anxiety-inducing empty spaces, combining oppressive intimacy and overwhelming expansiveness to ominous effect.
Spaces of Blank has been recorded for Van der Aa’s Disquiet label by Christianne Stotijn and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and is available through the Disquiet web-store.
Read more at the Spitalfields Music festival website.
May 2011
German premiere of 'The Book of Disquiet'
Klaus Maria Brandauer
Following five-star performances in Linz, Amsterdam and Porto in 2009 and 2010, Michel van der Aa’s third stage work, The Book of Disquiet , will receive its German premiere at the Staatstheater Saarbrücken on 20 May 2011.
The libretto to The Book of Disquiet is constructed from text fragments by the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, who often cast himself in a series of distinct characters, or ‘heteronyms’. Van der Aa portrays these multiple personalities through music, live action and video, described by the Guardian’s Andrew Clements as “a beautifully shot parade of visuals”. Klaus Maria Brandauer stars as Pessoa’s alter ego, bookseller Bernando Soares, while the Portuguese fado star Ana Moura appears on film as Ophelia, a girl in Soares’s dreams.
read more about The Book of Disquiet
April 2011
Van der Aa’s video opera 'One' released on Disquiet label
‘One’ DVD
Michel van der Aa’s video opera One has been released on the composer’s Disquiet label. Following CDs of Spaces of Blank/Mask/Imprint and Here Trilogy, One is Disquiet’s third release. In addition to a DVD release, One is also available for purchase as a standard and high resolution downloadable Quicktime video and pdf booklet through the Disquiet web store.
One was written in 2002 for the acclaimed soprano Barbara Hannigan, who stars in this recording. Accompanied only by video and an electronic soundtrack, she plays a solitary woman trapped in a cage of real and ‘captured’ time.
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Sol Gabetta, cello. Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Candida Thompson. Vakil Eelman.