What is chamber music?
An intimate conversation, the music of friends.
Offering a new level of intimacy to live-performance, chamber music is an interaction between individual voices. Written specifically for small groups of musicians, chamber music is designed to be performed, heard, and experienced in a close-knit, intimate setting, with the audience just as much a shared and active part of the experience as the musicians themselves.
From duos through to octets, each musician has an individual and influential role in the direction and narrative of the music. This interaction of voices and musical gestures often creates a dialogue similar to a good discussion or debate and gives the listener’s ear the opportunity to participate and decide what to listen to and which thread to follow.
Great masterworks of chamber music present a challenge to us, the listeners, to decide what to listen to from a multitude of imaginative avenues; do we sit back and let the rich polyphony wash over us? Do we feel drawn by a beautiful melody? Or do we get involved in a more immediate dialogue or counterpoint going on in the texture somewhere?
This multi-layered complexity gives us the chance to lose ourselves in the journey of this powerful music and can possibly only be compared with the alluring power of a great novel, painting or film.
Chamber music invites us to feel, be overwhelmed and inspired, all while standing in silent awe at the world’s edge, consumed by an emotive experience bigger than ourselves.
