Contraponto: Górecki and Adams

Violinist and artistic director Rakhi Singh, one of the most original figures on the British music scene and co-founder of the Manchester Collective, arrives at Theatro Circo to join the Sinfonietta de Braga in a programme from the Contraponto cycle that combines contemplation, intensity, and spirituality.

In this concert, the strings become a vehicle for landscape and transcendence. In John Luther Adams’ Canticles of the Sky, slowly transforming layers of sound evoke the breathing of the sky and cosmic vastness. In his recreation of the Latin hymn Veni Creator Spiritus, Singh transforms the ancestral voice into a living texture, dissolving the melody into echoes and resonances of powerful liturgical force. In Henryk Górecki’s String Quartet No. 2 Quasi una fantasia, we hear an inner journey, where rhythmic energy and silence intertwine in an arc of almost ritual solemnity.
Three distinct visions—cosmic, liturgical, and introspective—intersect in this encounter, where tradition and contemporary creation dialogue in search of light, memory, and transcendence.

Contraponto is a cycle dedicated to 20th and 21st century composition, where we invite local, national, and international ensembles and composers to guide us through the music of one of the most fertile periods in terms of new ideas and forms.