Composed by Mariana Sadovska for Kronos Quartet (USA)
Chernobyl.The Harvest is a composition commissioned by the Kronos Quartet / San Francisco for one voice and string quartet, based on ancient-ceremonial music of norhtern Ukraine and contemporary sound scales. In this “pegan requiem” Mariana is using the nuclear catastrophy of Chernobyl' as a starting point to experiment with distruction and creation of musical structures and stories.
It premiered in July 2012 in Kyiv (Ukraine), with a US premiere following at the Lincoln Center in New York (2013) and a UK premiere at the Barbican Center in London (2014).
„Through a plaintive theme and variations, Sadovska’s voice rose methodically from stunned horror to indignance and wrath: again, the triptych’s final theme, Heaven, appeared to be sarcastic to the extreme, Sadovska determined not to let the calamity slip from memory. Nuclear time forgives much more slowly than time as we experience it: 26 years after the catastrophe, wild mushrooms in Germany – thousands of miles from the disaster scene – remain inedible, contaminated with deadly nuclear toxins.“ Lucid Culture/USA