Sebastião Salgado paints an impactful picture of visual and auditory exemplification through his latest Amazônia in Concert held at the Barbican Hall in London. In the concert, he thematically blends photographs of the rainforest in the Amazons with music through a thematic connection featuring the Britten Sinfonia under Simone Menezes.
The event was a confluence of photography and music celebrating his striking career and vision through black and white images that captures the biodiversity, vulnerability, and fragility of one of the most composite ecosystems in the world. The images capture Amazonian nature, rainforest, and people. He collected his special pieces for 6 years as he traveled through the Brazilian Amazons through a perspective of acceptance and respect. Capturing the rivers through his inner and outer eye, he took the rivers, the mountains, the rainforests, and the people treasuring all of humanity and nature in a picturesque and powerful series. The vent saw the display of these photographs with a suite from Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Floresta do Amazonas in the Britten Sinfonia’s concert with conductor Simone Menezes.
The music score of the concert was hybrid exhibiting a combination of cantata and symphony. It was abridged from the music Villa-Lobos wrote in 1959 for the movie Green Mansions, which was based on the “romance of the tropical forest” by the naturalist WH Hudson. Only a few fragments of the original were used by MGM and the rest were as a result of recycled melodies playing straight into one’s hearts. The 80-minute concert comprised 23 movements out of which this suite made up 11 of them through a collective chamber orchestra. The concert was also composed of the obligatory Hollywood moods and moments but beauty prevailed till the very end. Romantic, lush, and gentle, the concert was highlighted by somber soprano without words displayed beautifully by Camila Titinger. She also took her presence by storm with a crafty love song set across a Portuguese text.
The whole concert was a creative collaboration of Menezes and Salgado who put together the music and the images in close proximity to each other. Some of the most mesmerizing shots included vast expanses of the mighty Amazonian rainforests with the invasive rivers and their tributaries contributing to the opening image of the concert. The thematic intimacy in the pictures also highlighted cultural and social aspects. The Forest Fire was also an important component and the penultimate movement along with the background score made for a ubiquitous statement. The violent rainstorms were synonymous with a living landscape.
The concert was much more than just images and music and opened vast perspectives of life and existence.
