A contemporary orchestral evening exploring exile, memory and hope, featuring works by Max Richter, Caroline Shaw and Jóhann Jóhannsson.
Among the leading figures of the Modern Classical movement are Ludovico Einaudi, Nils Frahm, and Max Richter. Richter’s musical language sits at the intersection of minimalism, European classical tradition, and electronic sounds. Deeply moved by the migration crises, he composed the mesmerizing Exiles in 2021. Contemplative and humanist, the work explores memory, the passage of time, and the experience of exile, gradually revealing the fragility of lives forced into displacement. The orchestral textures evoke the march of refugees and the fragile yet persistent hope for a better future.
Around this central work, the programme features compositions by Isang Yun, Caroline Shaw, Jóhann Jóhannsson, and Henryk Górecki, all exploring human fragility, memory, and exile through a rich variety of musical languages.
In Exiles, singer and performer Ekaterina Levental invites the audience to join her on a musical journey through various inner landscapes: loss, confrontation, despair and hope. Drawing on her own experience as a refugee, she gives voice to the search for a new identity — when the ground beneath your feet has disappeared, when home is no longer home, and the endless journey with no destination.
Shifting between fragile solos, raw cries, sweeping orchestral soundscapes, and intimate whispers, Exiles is more than a classical concert — it is a testimony to vulnerability, determination, and resilience. An experience meant not only to be heard, but deeply felt.
Like Caroline Shaw in her composition And So, Ekaterina seeks connection with what we already know. Through repetition and shifting timbres, meaning becomes fluid. Reason recedes into the background and the listening body takes over. As in Gertrude Stein's famous line, “A rose is a rose is a rose”, only the moment of perception gives meaning.
Thanks to the players of the National Lottery and to the Tax Shelter of the Federal Government of Belgium through Casa Kafka Pictures.
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