Work of the Week - Chaya Czernowin: Zohar Iver (blind radiance)

Swiss festival CULTURESCAPES, Bern, was founded in 2003 and since then, is presenting an annual focus on a cultural landscape with concerts, plays, lectures and exhibitions. After featuring Eastern European Regions in the past years, Israel is the country of interest in 2011. On this occasion, Israeli composer Chaya Czernowin was commissioned a new work for ensemble and orchestra. Entitled Zohar Iver (blind radiance), it is going to be premiered on 20 October 2011 by Ensemble Nikel and the Bern Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Mario Venzago at Kulturcasino Bern.

In many of her previous compositions Czernowin explores the depths of subconscious and the "beauty of the inner darkness" as well as the "intensity of life". About her new nine-part work, the composer writes:

This piece starts with an attempt to create a ‘music of touch’. Faraway and slowly moving shapes are abstract and hard to define, but at the same time easily felt or touched by listening. They are answered by remnants of human voices: drifting voices as if just carried on the wind from afar, played by the ensemble. The responsory gives way to a series of unpredictable encounters where corporeality and energy merge to open a new state: one of half-human / half-phenomenological unpredictable eruptions.

After a second performance at Kulturcasino Bern on 21 October, Zohar Iver will be performed at Stadtcasino Basel on 24 October.

• Chaya Czernowin - Profile
• Zohar Iver - more information and full digital score
• Website of festival CULTURESCAPES