The idea behind Silence & Rapture has been simmering for a long time. “Years ago, I dreamt of taking the music of Bach and Pärt to the desert – where you can really experience the deafening sounds of silence – and making some kind of film, but that never transpired,” Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) artistic director Richard Tognetti tells Broadsheet.
Tognetti’s dream never made it as far as the desert. But it’s now arrived in a different guise, via a collaboration with Sydney Dance Company’s artistic director Rafael Bonachela. For the past year, the two have been deep in the music of 18th-century German composer JS Bach and contemporary Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. Despite having lived 300 years apart, the two have in common a profound spirituality.
“Bach was the most spiritual of composers,” says Tognetti. “He was driven by this belief in the almighty scriptures of the Lutheran bible … Pärt’s music is the perfect foil because he shared a serious and sincere response to the scriptures but told through a different narrative – the Russian Orthodox.”
It made sense, then, for Tognetti to shape the performance around the classic religious arc of downfall and redemption. Silence & Rapture carries audiences through the three gardens of the Bible, from the paradise of the Garden of Eden to the tragedy of the Garden of Gethsemane to the glory of the Garden of Heaven.
“With that structure, we could easily find pieces that worked,” says Tognetti. “Bach had a colossal output and is the most adaptable of all the great composers … Pärt is quite the opposite. He hasn’t left us with a great number of opuses. But he shares that adaptability … and that structure, clarity and rigour.”
Tognetti’s selection ranges from Bach’s Erbarme Dich (Have Mercy), an aria from St Matthew Passion, which he describes as the “one of the greatest works ever written”, to Pärt’s My Heart’s in the Highlands. “There’s a lovely story attached to that, told to Satu [Vanska, the ACO’s principal violinist],” he says. “She performed with David James, the singer who inspired the song – it was a birthday gift to him. Pärt called him up and said, ‘I’ve got a present for you’. The song’s pretty much on one note, which is a damn difficult thing to [do]. It’s one of the great pop songs – as in simple, affecting, accessible songs – ever written.”
Singing My Heart’s in the Highlands – as well as the show’s other vocal pieces – will be British countertenor Iestyn Davies. “It’s been a dream of ours to work with him,” says Tognetti. “He’s in the firmament of great singers. He has an extraordinary voice and comes from the great British tradition of singing, which, thank goodness, is still alive and well.”
While Tognetti has put together the repertoire, Bonachela has choreographed for two dancers, Liam Green and Emily Seymour, from Sydney Dance Company.
“Our vision was to make the complete experience seamless,” says Bonachela. “It’s not like, ‘There’s a dance happening here, and a tenor there, and the musicians there’.” His guiding principle is – as it was for Tognetti’s programming – the music’s “structure, purity, simplicity and spirituality”.
“[I was] inspired by the journey of the human soul. [For example], the Garden of Eden is a place of innocence, but also temptation. All I need is two words to go off – to close my eyes and see possibilities … For a choreographer obsessed with purity of movement and the body, and how the body can say so much without anything else, I’m also incredibly connected to the music.”
Silence & Rapture might be inspired by intensely spiritual music, and tell a religious story, but both Tognetti and Bonachela feel sure the show holds a powerful experience for even the non-religious.
“As atheists, we borrow from this spiritual river to find our own transcendence,” says Tognetti. “It’s a complex topic, of course, but I think we all share this quiet space where we gaze into the stars and wonder what’s going on.”
Silence & Rapture can be seen in Sydney on August 6 & 7, before travelling to Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Canberra and Brisbane.
