Following two sold-out runs, Death of Classical returns to the magnificent Crypt under the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, performing a pair of works that explore the resilience of art in response to destruction.

Missy Mazzoli's Dark with Excessive Bright – here performed in its arrangement for string quintet with violin soloist – takes its title from a line in Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, where a blind man attempts to describe his vision of God. In a similarly surreal and evocative manner, Mazzoli's music twists, turns, and transforms, casting and chasing shadows across four centuries of musical expression from the Baroque era through to the present day.

Written in the final days of World War II, Metamorphosen was a deeply personal lament from Richard Strauss, as he mourned the destruction of culture that he saw taking place around him. Heard here in its rarely-performed string septet arrangement, it unfolds as a single, continuous meditation on grief – an elegy for art lost to war.

Program
Missy Mazzoli: Dark with Excessive Bright (Violin Solo and String Quintet Arrangement)
Richard Strauss: Metamorphosen (String Septet Arrangement)

Performers - Lake George Music Festival Alumni
Barbora Kolarova, solo violin
Gregory Lewis, violin
Giancarlo Latta, violin
Bethany Hargreaves, viola
Jiawei Yan, viola
Sam DeCaprio, cello
Laura Andrade, cello
Charles Paul, bass