“The Fall of America” European Premiere
Conductor Lars Fredén will conduct the Gustaf Vasa Chamber Choir and members of the Royal Swedish Orchestra in a new orchestration of Eleonor Sandresky’s “The Fall of America” for its European premiere in Stockholm, Sweden on March 13, 2022.
In the process of retaining the original intent and sound world, Eleonor reimagines the work for full string orchestra.
Lars Fredén and the Gustaf Vasa Chamber Choir.
Listing Info
SANDRESKY “The Fall of America” (2004; orch. 2022)
Sunday 13 March 2022 at 16.00
Gustaf Vasa Chamber Choir
Members of the Royal Swedish Orchestra
Lars Fredén, conductor
About The Fall of America
“When the New York Treble Singers asked me to write a choral piece after the onset of the Iraqi conflict of 2003, I wrote The Fall of America. While their brief had nothing to do with a response to war, I had a need to make one. In that response, and following a trip to Russia just previously, I set out to counteract the ugliness of war with the beauty of sonorities that I experienced in Russia and the imagery in William Blake’s poetry. To express this dichotomy of ugliness and beauty, I chose to pair rich, sonorous harmonies with an early Renaissance-style string technique used in the accompaniment. The mixing of the two Blake poems — The Garden of Love and For the Sexes — with the few lines of Ginsberg’s The Fall of America gives a modern feel to the words and enhances the meaning.”
–Eleonor Sandresky, 2004
