“Hell und Dunkel” - a movie project

A video recording of the world premiere of Sofia Gubaidulina’s ‘Hell und Dunkel’  for accordion duo.

In these odd times, where restrictions put boundary on most musical activity, it is a pleasure to be able to launch this innovative project. The background is, that Sofia Gubaidulina has wanted to make a version for 2 accordions of her organ work Hell und Dunkel. This version is made in collaboration with Geir Draugsvoll, to whom she dedicated one of her most frequently performed concerts, Fachwerk (2009).

It has been a wish from the composers side, that the version is performed by Draugsvoll and another one of her favorite performers, Hanzhi Wang. The world premiere of the piece during the festival ‘RDAM Accordion 50 years’, it premiered on October 3rd, 2021 at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. During this festival, we honor Sofia Gubaidulina as the most important composer for our instrument, with a portrait concert for her 90th anniversary.

Due to the pandemic - where Hanzhi was in China, it was unlikely that Hanzhi and Geir were able to perform this piece in a live situation in October, 2021. Therefore we have made the arrangement with Gubaidulina, to make a recording experiment, where Hanzhi records her part in China, and Geir does his part in Copenhagen. This is of course a great challenge in such a complex work, but we are satisfied that we made an extraordinary film about a wonderful work, with the respect towards the artistic level that her music always requires.