Join us in celebrating the return of the much-loved Reflections in Music series with Turning Points, a program in which each work represents a pivotal moment — personal, artistic, or historical — that changed the course of music and of the composer who created it. Bruce Wolosoff, artistic director, pianist, and composer, is joined by esteemed musicians, composers, and performers Narek Arutyunian (clarinet), Deborah Buck (violin), and Clarice Jensen (cello and electronics) to weave together works spanning three centuries, each marking a distinct turning point.
The performance opens with the Liturgie de Cristal from Olivier Messiaen’s masterpiece Quartet for the End of Time, a work composed while he was being held in a Nazi prison camp during World War II. Messiaen explored new approaches to musical time, to tonal organization, and extensively used bird song in his music. This theme of transformation continues with Ferruccio Busoni's Elegy No. 1, After the Crisis, a solo piano work written during a period of artistic change. The composer disavowed all of his earlier work after composing the Elegies.
Contemporary voices speak through Clarice Jensen's new work for cello and electronics, exploring the intersection of classical music and technology. Bruce Wolosoff's Blues for the New Millennium, commissioned by the Smithsonian to mark the transition into the 21st century, bridges classical and blues idioms. The Washington Post noted that it "really does sound like a turning point" — and, indeed, it marked a shift in Wolosoff's compositional approach, introducing blues elements that would become part of his musical language.
Bach's Gavotte from the E Major Partita serves as a historical cornerstone in the development of solo violin repertoire. The program returns to Messiaen with Abîme des Oiseaux, the profound solo clarinet movement from Quartet for the End of Time, before concluding with Ástor Piazzolla's Spring movement from The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires — a work that reimagines Vivaldi's baroque masterpiece through the lens of nuevo tango, a turning point in the fusion of low and high art. We are reminded in this work that the change of seasons is always a point of transition in our lives.
