Harmony Beyond Music

Harmony Beyond Music is a series of chamber recitals exploring themes of equality and diversity, performed by internationally recognised musicians brought together by Reiko Fujisawa, and introduced by Peter Quantrill.

Music has never been written, performed or appreciated in a bubble. It engages with the time and place of its composition and performance. Social and political themes are expressed through the music of the day. Racial and social justice, political and gender oppression, the struggle for freedom and recognition of the individual: music illuminates these themes as a mirror of its time.

Protest doesn’t have to take the form of grim defiance. Arvo Pärt rebelled from Soviet conformity with a new and timeless voice of calm. Martinu wrote his Second Sonata in the US as a wartime exile from his beloved Czech lands, but he translated his exile into music of joy in adversity. In the hands of Weinberg and Casals, the cello becomes an extension of the human voice, conquering struggle with heroic defiance.

Harmony Beyond Music takes themes of conflict, exclusion and prejudice into the concert hall, bringing us face to face with shadows from the past and giving us hope for the future.