The five Sorrowful Sonatas takes the story as seen and felt by Mary from the Garden of Gethsemane to Golgotha. The deliberate mis-tuning of these sonatas delivers an extraordinarily muted sound, in some cases the four strings are compressed within an octave’s span. Despite this musical mutilation the beauty of the music shines through. Ruth Padel is famous for her ability to create poems about music. Her cycle of poems was commissioned by the Festival.
