Salome Fast: Lincoln Center Festival 2000 Salome Fast at the Lincoln Center Festival 2000 About Salome Fast Salome Fast, for small ensemble and reciting voice, was written for Amsterdam?s Asko Ensemble, and was premiered in Amsterdam in 1996. The music is composer Ron Ford?s interpretation of Hugo von Hofmannsthal?s libretto for Richard Strauss?s opera, Salome, with Aramaic text taken from the Bible ? and with Salome as the work?s narrator. The short work is fast-paced and includes a virtuosic percussion part for vibraphone, marimba, xylophone, two roto-toms, and güiro. The reciting voice is amplified and, with loudspeakers placed near the performer, becomes gradually distorted. When the work premiered at the Concertgebouw?s Klein Zaal last year, Der Telegraaf wrote that Salome Fast is a "virtuoso piece which carries an excitingly direct musical charge." The character of Salome "is embodied in rapid figures, while John the Baptist, her opposite role in the opera, holds his own with resounding wind chorales." Salome begins her narration halfway through Ford?s piece and by the end has "become a screaming witch who succumbs in a theatrical percussive explosion." When and where
Lincoln Center Festival 2000
Asko and Schönberg Ensemble
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