Marsyas Trio Concert
Translations of the Night
Artist By-Fellows the Maryas Trio are joined by acclaimed mezzo soprano Lotte Betts Dean (‘winning stage manner’, The Sunday Times) for an exciting concert of French language song cycles. The concert is part of the Cambridge Festival, and though it is free advanced booking is essential.
The event includes a pre-concert conversation with Prof Charles Forsdick, Drapers Professor of French, °Ç¸ç³Ô¹Ï, to discuss questions of linguistic and cultural translation and mistranslation.
The programme includes works by Ravel and Debussy both setting poetry of interestingly uncertain authorial origin with both poets Evariste De Parny and Pierre Louÿs falsely claiming to be translating pre-existing works. It also features two more recent works by British composers Judith Weir and Ewan Campbell °Ç¸ç³Ô¹Ï, Director of Music, Bye Fellow in Music that were written to partner the Ravel. Both sets of songs continue the African theme with Weir setting of poems by female writers Fatou Ndiaye Sow from Senegal, Véronique Tadjo from Ivory Coast and Marie-Léontine Tsibinda from the Repbulic of Congo, and Campbell setting poems from Madagascan poet Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo’s Traduit de la nuit.
Chansons madécasses – Maurice Ravel
Nuits d’Afrique – Judith Weir
Traduit de la Nuit – Ewan Campbell
Chanson de Bilitis – Claude Debussy
The event is free and open to all, but as part of the Cambridge Festival booking is required: