Entropy: A Performance by Daniel Jung and Cristian Makhuli

Entropy aims to create an intimate experience with the purpose of representing the universe’s gravitation towards disorder through the development of two characters: the human spirit (Daniel Jung) and cosmic disorder (Cristian Makhuli). The concert features an alternation in pieces between these two characters, one after the other, increasingly becoming more disordered as the concert progresses. Before the program begins, the concert opens with a prelude: a two-hand Johann Sebastian Bach cantata meditation arranged by György Kurtág, which sets the stage for pure, celestial peace.

The program then begins with a Francis Poulenc suite, introducing the content human spirit – bright, lyrical, and structured. Yet, this initial sense of structured form and lyricism is confronted sharply with a sudden outburst of cosmic disorder, with a jarringly distorted etude by Pierre Boulez immediately following this illusion of order. After this point, nothing is quite the same – as the human spirit engages in this back-and-forth dialogue between cosmic disorder, it itself becomes more disordered. The human spirit follows the progression of pieces by Francis Poulenc, Frédéric Chopin, Federico Mompou, Alexander Scriabin, and in between is pulled by the force of disorder from Pierre Boulez, Philip Glass, Frederic Rzewski, and Hans Otte.

Ultimately, the program comes full circle with a two-hands work by Reinhard Febel, a hymn written after a chorale prelude by Johann Sebastian Bach. Though similar in its meditative nature as the opening Bach, something appears off – the disjunct sonorities from the upper voices are a reminder of the disturbing course of events throughout the concert. Nonetheless, the grand scheme of the universe returns to its state of disordered peace.