STAND UP! (2016/2019)

Stand Up! paraphrases a number of existing musical works, among them Bernard Hermann’s score to the 1941 film Citizen Kane, Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture and Prokofiev’s opera The Fiery Angel, which was written in the 1920s but only premièred decades later, after the composer’s death. All three works deal with the misuse of political power in different ways.

Žuraj, in speaking about the work, referred to different ways of responding to political hate speech, ‘one can laugh and make fun of it, one can get angry, or one can try to speak slowly but firmly, trying to drown it out with facts, and in so doing mobilise sensible opposition to it.’

Alwyn Tomas Westbrooke

Stand Up! was written in reaction to a growing tendency towards far-right populism in Europe. The title represents an appeal to ‘stand up’, be it against aggression, for one’s beliefs or in any other political sense. The work’s orchestral tumult is complemented by three extensive percussion cadenzas, the percussion battery being augmented in a revised version to include a wide range of colourful and exotic percussion instruments.