The Kreutzer Project: E.jacobsen / The Knights

The Knights, the bold Brooklyn-based orchestral collective, embody the spirit of exploration with The Kreutzer Project, a program that posits Tolstoys response to Beethovens Kreutzer Sonata: What exactly is it? I dont understand. What is music? What does it do? And why does it do what it does? Beethoven and Tolstoy in turn inspired Czech composer Leo Jancek, whose first string quartet is also called Kreutzer Sonata. The Knights response to these iconoclastic touchstones is to reimagine the Beethoven as Kreutzer Concerto, arranged by The Knights co-founder Colin Jacobsen who is also the orchestrated versions violin soloist; and the Jancek as orchestrated by The Knights co-founder and conductor Eric Jacobsen. They keep the canon going with Colins newly-composed Kreutzings, which makes buried allusions to both Beethoven and Jancek; and a commission from Anna Clyne, whose piece Shorthand takes its title from a line in Tolstoys novella: music is the shorthand of emotion.