BMus Final Recital 2023 - The Colour of Pomegranates by Julian Anderson

🎥 Recorded on 9th June 2023 at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama
🎓 Justyna Szynkarczyk's Bachelor of Music Final Recital

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The Colour of Pomegranates is a short nocturne for alto flute and piano premiered in 1995, after the film of the same name by the Armenian director Sergei Paradjanov premiered in 1969.

The film is a poetic treatment of the life of 18th-century Armenian poet and troubadour Sayat-Nova, the ‘King of Songs’. It recounts the stages of his life as a writer, lover, and priest. The director pays his own homage to the depiction of dreamlike imagery infused with the dramaturgy of colour.

In one part of the film, a peasant sits on a cupola playing his flute to the accompaniment of church bells from below; in the piece, this image is translated into the slow, lyrical melody played by the alto flute, while the piano provides the bells.


Justyna Szynkarczyk - Alto Flute
Steven Neugarten - Piano


00:10 Verse I
00:36 Verse II
01:53 Verse III
02:51 Verse IV (Lullaby)
03:55 Verse V