A concert based on the fascinating ‘correspondence of the arts’ and the philosophical extensions of this idea: here, music responds to painting, represented by the ebullient and tragic Basquiat, and to the poignant, existential poetry of W.H. Auden.

For Tuxedo Vasco ‘de’ Gama, British composer Hannah Kendall draws her inspiration from a work by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Tuxedo, with interlacing words, symbols and hieroglyphs, delivering a musical meditation on multiculturalism.

Also by Basquiat, the piece Eroica, created after the death of his friend Andy Warhol, contains a violent representation of death, streaked with crossed out words, splinters, and bloody traces. The painting is a reference to Beethoven’s iconic ‘Eroica’ Symphony, originally dedicated to Bonaparte, which includes the famous ‘Funeral march’.

Titled ‘The Age of Anxiety’ after W.H. Auden’s poem by the same name, Bernstein’s Symphony No.2, with solo piano, in its two big parts (the first, dominated by a system of variation), evokes the conversation between several characters (three men and a woman) on the existential anguish and vertigo of the human condition.