Silent Night (Christmas Without You)
for violin and piano
Composed for Lydia Sawires
World premiere performance: 12 June 2025
Commissioned by the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) as part The ANAM Set 2025 and written for Lydia Sawires, with its world premiere during ANAM’s 2025 recital season at the Abbotsford Convent, Melbourne.
This ANAM Set commission was generously supported by the Anthony and Sharon Lee Foundation
Program note:
The idea for this piece came to me in the lead up to Christmas 2023 as I reflected on what it means to experience Christmas in the absence of loved ones passed. I thought about my grandfather Jānis Mačēns who had passed away a few months prior, and about my grandmother Ilga Mačēna who that year would spend her first Christmas in almost 70 years of married life without him.
Originally this piece was titled 'First Christmas Without You'. As the music unfolded, I began to consider the experience as a 'silent night' – an honouring of those absent, of the silence and space created by the loss of those with whom Christmas was once shared.
About the composer:
Ella Macens is rapidly becoming one of Australia's most celebrated young composers. Her contemporary classical works are grounded in a deeply evocative and sensitive musical aesthetic, with a musical language inspired by her love of popular and classical music styles. Growing up in a rich and colourful Latvian community has led her to be continuously surrounded by instrumental folk music, baltic choral music and traditional dance. These elements have unsurprisingly also woven their way into Ella's compositional style.
Her works have been commissioned and/or performed by the Sydney, Melbourne, Tasmanian, and Canberra Symphony Orchestras; the Flinders and Goldner string quartets; Inventi Ensemble, Muses Trio, Ensemble Apex, The Song Company, Sydney Chamber Choir, Sydney Children's Choir, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, Claire Edwardes, the Australian Ballet, Sydney Festival, and the Canberra International Music Festival, among others. Internationally, Macens' works have been performed by the Ulster Orchestra, Brunel Sinfonia, Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra, Richmond Delta Youth Orchestra, State Choir Latvija, the Riga Cathedral Girls' Choir, and the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music Chamber Choir, to name a few.
In 2023 Macens was a finalist in the Australian Art Music Awards in the category of Work of the Year - Large Ensemble for her orchestral work ‘Release’. The composer has held numerous composition residency positions - Sydney Youth Orchestra and Trinity Grammar School (2015), Sydney Children's Choir (2018-19), the Flinders Quartet (2020), International Grammar School (2021) and Presbyterian Ladies' College, Sydney from 2020-24. In 2018-19 she was one of four composers selected to participate in the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra Australian Composers' School. Ella is currently an Associate Lecturer in Composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.