Details

An ode to minimalist music and its depths of emotion.

Duo Kirsanova-Lewis was born out of the pair’s shared interests in contemporary chamber music and the history of Latvian folk song tradition. Their partnership has led to a wider exploration of art music and its role in storytelling, inspiring hope and drawing people together. The duo are also Featured Artists in the Musica Viva 2023 touring program.

Since the 1970s, minimalist music has evolved and expanded, refining the raw ingredients of melody, modality and rhythm to highlight how minimalist ideas move between the aural, the visual and the verbal to reach new emotional depths for listeners.

About the concert

Violinist Sophia Kirsanova and pianist Georgina Lewis celebrate the diversity, economic invention and depth of emotion of the minimalist movement. This program journeys from John Adam’s iconic Road Movies to the holy minimalism of Baltic composers Pēteris Vasks and Arvo Pärt, and wonderful and daring composers on the fringes of the movement, including ‘Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart’, Missy Mazzoli. The duo also performs Platon Buravicky’s rarely heard, celestial and deeply moving Angel’s Sight.

Georgina explores juxtapositions of freedom and discipline, introspection and prayer, beauty and pain in piano music from Arvo Pärt and, closer to home, Australia’s own Andrea Keller. Keller’s Life is Brut[if]al featured on her 2020 Journey Home album, a response to deep study of Pärt’s compositional techniques.

This concert also marks a special moment with Sophia giving the Australian premiere, and the second ever performance of Pēteris Vasks Sonata estiva (Summer Sonata) for violin solo, with the composer’s blessing. Written in 2022 in response to the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the sonata was intended to bring brightness and hope, take the world away from the harshness of reality and into a meditation on Latvian folk music and nature.

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Artists

Georgina Lewis piano
Georgina Lewis completed her Bachelor of Music (Honours) at the Victorian College of the Arts, studying Repertoire Keyboard with Donna Coleman. She performs with some of Melbourne’s most respected musicians and has earned a reputation for her sensitivity and authentic, ‘unfiltered musicality’. Georgina completed a Master of Arts and Cultural Management in 2018, focusing her final year studies on Intangible Cultural Heritage policy, and her interest in this field crosses over into her curation and performance practices.’

Sophia Kirsanova violin
Latvian violinist Sophia Kirsanova has performed across Europe, Israel and Australia and has been a soloist with orchestras including the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra and the Israel Camerata of which she was also a member from 2009-2018. A passionate promoter of new repertoire, Sophia champions Latvian composers internationally and commissions new works regularly.