Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness is not a clarinet concerto in the usual sense of the word. Here, no virtuoso soloist confronts the orchestra. On the contrary, Christian Jost lets the soloist be caught up within a musical maelstrom between two orchestras which are clearly separated from each other in the concert hall.

The starting point for his piece, says the composer, was the ‘adventure of discovery of one’s own personality’. It tells ‘a story of exploitation and the derailment of power, symbolized by a divided orchestra, which moulds around the soloist like a rhythmic spiral, like a jungle made of sound, and pulls him deeper and deeper in, right in to the ‘heart of darkness’.