Victoria Poleva: ‘White Interment’ at the George Enescu Festival

Vladimir Jurowski will conduct the Bayerisches Staatsorchester at the famous George Enescu Festival 2023 and in Berlin for the performance of  “White Interment”, a one-movement symphony by Victoria Poleva, who recently signed an exclusive contract with Donemus, bringing her impressive oeuvre to the Donemus catalogue.

The literary basis of this work is the poem of Gennady Aigi “Now always snows”. The text of the poem dissolved in the musical texture and is present only at the level of rhythm in original sounds quite differently than in English: “teper`vsegda snega”, as opposed to “now-always-snows” or  “Jetzt-immer-Schnee”. 

It is very important because the rhythm of the verse defines the entire shape of the symphony. Poetic series can be described with metaphors of burial by snow, pulling into the whirlpool, falling into the abyss of a gentle sleep, and suddenly collapsing space. On the idea of the composer, this symphony should produce psychedelic emotional effects.

The static form of the symphony is built of large mirror-symmetric blocks, which are graphically defined baroque rhetorical figures:

• Theme, Circulatio, Catabasis, Aposiopesis, Anabasis, Circulatio, Subject.
• Catabasis (Greek descent) – downward motion
• Anabasis (Greek climbing)
• Aposiopesis (Gr. concealment, disguise) – general pause, depicting death and eternity
• Circulatio (Latin: circle) – the whirling motion of the melody (the symbol of “eternity”).

More info about the concerts here and here.