CONCERT FOR BROTHERHOOD - 2023

Saturday 7 January at 20 hrs.

Centro Cultural Estación Mapocho

 

This is a citizen project in which Fanjul&Ward is part of,

it is a concert in which hearts and generosity are joined together

to make music a common territory.

 

 

We began in 2019 by renewing our vow of ‘brotherhood’ under the starry cupola of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Then in 2020, the shadow of Chile’s estallido social, Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony spoke to us of the nature of life and death and resurrection.

In 2022, after endless months of pandemic, we met again to honour humanity, honour the departed, honour those who remain... And instrumentalists, singers and audience were summoned to a convergence of souls and hearts guided by Johannes Brahms and his exquisite German Requiem.

Here we are - 2023 and we have lived almost three years of isolation, devastation and loss. The ‘wheel of Fortune’ has spun and almost no-one in the world escaped where the dice fell.

 

What we know is that music is not merely about entertainment, rather the great and the extraordinary composers, see and hear with refined and subtle senses; they shine a light on our humanity, our frailty and our greatness. They underline our magnificence, and they highlight our malevolence. And the truly brilliant composer makes everything make sense, bringing harmony once more to our hearts, home and world.

 

Concierto por La Hermandad 2023 - Carmina Burana by Carl Orff

With perhaps the most well-known opening bars to any symphonic work ever, Carmina Burana is an incantation, an invocation and a declaration that Life has its ups and downs. The great wheel of Fortune turns, and all are subject to her whims. One day all goes well, then winter and its terrible storms arrive. Destruction and decimation, starvation and loss are part of this wheel of luck. And in the same way that the whole world past through two years of quarantine, two years or more of traumatising events and losses, the spring always returns. Life goes on and nothing is permanent.

 

After these past years, what could we do, what can we do but return to the routine of our mundane lives? Step by step, task by task, drink by drink and flirtation by flirtation, once more gathering momentum and reigniting the power to navigate our daily lives. Flowing with the way of the seasons, we go about again, seeding success in the smaller details of life.

 

Carmina Burana is an audacious invitation to travel the wheel of fortune, to laud and lament; to sing and to cry; to triumph, to fail and to return once again. This piece implores us as humans, to accept it all, and to delight in the love that is around us, appreciate the sun in all its glory, and celebrate the small yet important victories that make up the fabric of our lives.

 

Orff beckons us to a collective tossing off of the darkness and its burdens. He shows us that the more we embrace the spring and the summer with full living, the easier it is to accept the inevitable return of the winter. He shows us that when we celebrate together the things of our daily lives, then we gather the kind of momentum that carries us through the times when Fortune is not so favourable.