Cassandra Miller’s celebrated viola concerto I cannot love without trembling made its Swiss debut with Geneviève Strosser and Sinfonieorchester Basel, conducted by Elena Schwarz on 18 January. On 21 February it received a further performance from the BBC Philharmonic at Bridgewater Hall with Lawrence Power and Ludovic Morlot.
…the most haunting memory of [the concert] was the gentle, song-inspired and highly original Viola Concerto…in many ways its greatest appeal is its underlying simplicity…Everything is stillness and stasis; there are drone effects of many kinds; textures are slowly thickened and thinned…this concerto is unlike anything else in its genre, and utterly bewitching.
The Arts Desk (Robert Beale) 23 February 2026
The 25-minute work takes its title from the writings of Simone Weil and draws on the music-making of Epirot violinist Alexis Zoumbas, who left his mountainous homeland in Greece for the United States. Recordings of his improvised, lamenting moiroloi, the funeral music associated with the women of Epirus, is another creative impetus for the work. It is cast in one unbroken span with five sections: four verses with a concluding cadenza), each one titled after a quotation from Weil. Writing in The New Yorker, Alex Ross commented, “the atmosphere of lamentation is engulfing…you could hear the work as one more apocalyptic lullaby for an anxious age…This is music that reminds us how to cry.”
It premiered with Lawrence Power and the Brussels Philharmonic in 2023, receiving its UK debut from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Power with subsequent appearances at the Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele and the BBC Proms in 2024, with the BBC Philharmonic. Power will give the Canadian premiere of the piece with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and Elim Chan in May 2026. In April 2025 Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber premiered their choreography of the piece with GöteborgsOperans Danskompani, as part of the double bill Dusk till Dawn.
In January 2026 Morlot gave the Spanish premiere of Miller’s Swim with the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya – the 17-minute work draws dual inspiration from the music of Schumann’s ‘Rhenish’ symphony and the writing of Anne Carson. With the orchestra he created the world premiere recording of Miller’s La Donna (2021), released on the orchestra’s own label in 2023, following their commission of the work for Miller’s tenure as guest composer in 2020-21.
Elena Schwarz previously conducted the German premiere of Miller’s collaboration with Silvia Tarozzi Bismillah Meets the Creator in Springtime at the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik as part of focus on the composer in 2025 with the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln; the 22-minute work exemplifies the breadth of Miller’s imagination, with its influences including Bismillah Khan performing the raag Malkauns and Pharaoh Sanders’ The Creator has a Master Plan (2003).