Another Dutch premiere at the Residentie Orkest! On Sunday, April 21, we will hear for the first time in our country The Louder the Birds Sing by British composer Angela Elizabeth Slater. She wrote it during the coronal shockdown and thus won the Gaudeamus Composition Award.

The inspiration for the work The Louder the Birds Sing was a phenomenon that composer Angela Elizabeth Slater discovered during the darkest early days of the corona pandemic. In the silence of the lockdown, she discovered that the birds around her seemed to sing much louder. But it turned out that the birds were not making more noise as much as the sharp decrease in human noise pollution made the birds suddenly much more audible. It produced an uneasy double feeling. On the one hand, the vulnerability of humans being isolated by a virus and, on the other, the birds continuing to sing their song freely. That conflicting emotion is the basis of this orchestral work. You hear the outbursts of helpless rage over the oppressive pandemic, but in the silence also the birds that show with their song that life goes on as usual.