Image: Gustav Klimt, Death and Life (1915)

MORTAL

Summer 2026

Our final program this season is a meditation on transience. Join us for two song cycles and two piano works that explore the entanglement of life and death.

Béla Bartók’s “Five Songs Op. 16” portrays the depths of grief through haunting texts by Hungarian poet Endre Ady that swirl with specters, coffins, and lost time. Gabriela Lena Frank’s “Cuatro Canciones Andinas” animates the folklore of the Quechua people in a series of vignettes that traverse both earthly despair and the mystery of the afterlife. The solemn counterpoint of J.S. Bach’s “Prelude and Fugue in B minor” highlights the momentary, transformative intersections of different timelines. Finally, Jerome Kitzke sets Allen Ginsberg’s impassioned “Sunflower Sutra,” a poetic sermon on finding the beauty in mortality.

Béla Bartók: Five Songs Op. 16

Gabriela Lena Frank: Cuatro Canciones Andinas

Intermission

Johann Sebastian Bach: Prelude and Fugue in B minor BWV 869

Jerome Kitzke: Sunflower Sutra for speaking pianist

Artists:

Alexandre Tchaykov, piano

Carmen Edano, mezzo-soprano

Sadie Habas, mezzo-soprano