Donaueschingen 2026: Kamran Badrnia on Thirst by Rebecca Saunders for String Orchestra (Ensemble Resonanz)

I would like to begin this critique by admitting that Rebecca Saunders is one of my favourite composers, and I am not sure how much my writing will be affected by my feelings about her music. Yet, I can say that at least with regard to this particular piece I tried to put my own personal aesthetic preferences aside and approach the artwork from a neutral point of view.

As Saunders mentions in the programme note for this piece, music is not only capable of expressing pure passion but also fragility and vulnerability. I felt that this work has a relatively strong focus on materials that are inherently unstable, yet which are brought under the composer’s control with extreme precision.

From a broader perspective I would consider this piece a continuation of two other pieces of Saunders which are also written for strings: Hauch (Violin Solo), and Breath (Violin Duo). If we look at these three pieces (Hauch, Breath, Thirst) together, to some extent they all share materials and characteristics, beginning with their titles. They all are named after bodily sensations and needs which help to keep us alive and at the same time are proofs for our mortality, vulnerability and imperfection. As I reviewed the score before listening to the premiere, I found the similarities in materials, gestures, and colours in comparison with two other works particularly striking.

A few examples of these elements include: lyrical and expressive use of Glissandi, dusty timbres and characters of the used playing techniques, absence of pulse (in the beginning of the piece), strongly contrapuntal writing, evident even in the division and positioning the instruments, General Rests (G.P.) symbolizing breathing between sections

Excerpt of Breath 2023

Excerpt of Hauch 2018

That being said, I consider the principal distinction between this work and the two previously discussed pieces to lie in its formal development and in the gradual expansion of its palette of materials and gestures throughout the later sections of the composition. Materials are not transformed and to some extent developed throughout the piece, as in the other two works, but we rather hear an inner growth of the same materials to the point that the piece can explain its entity and ambition. The materials focus on the concept of fragility during the first half of the piece, where even the dynamics stay in the range of ppp-mp. As the piece develops, materials start to evolve and each new section branches out to different, richer, and contrasting textures.

My criticism mostly concerns the first half of the piece, since I believe that Saunders concentrates on representing the fragility through musical materials. I know that according to her words and from a personal point of view of the audience this can be also understood as fragility of human beings or etc. but this is not a topic of my discussion, since I believe neither the artist nor audience are ever completely sure about the intention of the artwork that they create or encounter.

I brought this comparison up, since what I found to be something that this piece did not achieve, is exactly one of its own musical concepts: Fragility and Vulnerability. I believe that the two other pieces convey these qualities very well in creating an atmosphere or journey representing their ambition in musical language. This is because a musical idea must be suited to the medium through which it is expressed; an orchestra is a powerful instrument, not a delicate or fragile one. Although the music, from a technical point of view, is wonderfully well written, the atmosphere created in the first half of piece does not serve its purpose. Therefore, from a personal point of view, I find it to be unsatisfactory. Simply because it does not seem to be the right medium for it, especially in contrast with Hauch and Breath as they convey the same concept considerably better.

As a final remark I would like to emphasize, that whether a piece works or does not (as it is commonly said while describing the pieces after the premieres) or whether a piece achieves its ambition or not (to formulate it with academic language) depends not only on the music itself. It also depends on several other aspects, which usually are not considered to be part of the process of creating an artwork, but that are indeed very crucial, such as the medium!

by Kamran Badrnia