O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes...
Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream,
And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?
from ‘’Sonnet to sleep‘ and ’On death' by John Keats
These words by Keats inspired Bart Vanhecke for his composition Close my willing eyes for 3 sopranos and ensemble. This 1999 composition has never been performed until now because of its large instrumentation. Thanks to the collaboration between the Collective and WALPURGIS, this is now about to change.
This is not the first time Bart Vanhecke has been inspired by literature. His instrumental work, too, almost always has a poem at its origin. For instance, at the basis of Dans l'eau du songe, for bass clarinet, cello and piano, the poem Reflets By Maurice Maeterlinck.
Close my willing eyes by Flemish composer Bart Vanhecke is the backbone of this concert programme, both musically and in terms of content, for which WALPURGIS, after several collaborations with soloists from the Collectief already, will for the first time perform with this full ensemble.
Close my willing eyes is a concert programme in which 4 singers (3 sopranos and 1 mezzo-soprano) and 11 musicians (3 flutes, 1 clarinet, 2 percussionists, 1 harp, 1 piano, 1 violin, 1 viola and 1 cello) in various line-ups and in a lighting design by Stef Depover, explore the range between light and darkness, between life and death, between poetry and music.
Press
“It is an impressive overview of varied, well-crafted ánd beautifully expressive music. (...) The title track Close my willing eyes leaves the deepest impression. The large ensemble and three sopranos let languorous melodic arabesques meander through each other, giving John Keats” verses on night, sleep and death a breathtaking intensity."
Maarten Beirens, De Standaard
