Classical Music

Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Music Events, Piano

Keys to the Future Festival Coming Up Next Week

Season two of Keys to the Future, a festival of contemporary music for solo piano, takes place next week, November 7-9 (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) at Greenwich House’s Renee Weiler Concert Hall.  The six participating pianists are Lisa Moore, Blair McMillen, Tatjana Rankovich, Lora Tchekoratova, Polly Ferman, and myself. 

On the first night (Tuesday, 11/7), the brilliant pianist Blair McMillen will perform Fred Hersch’s gigantic piece called 24 Variations on a Bach Chorale. Here are some notes by the composer: 

The original chorale melody is by Hans Leo Hassler (1562-1612), but was borrowed several times by J.S. Bach, mostly famously as “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunder” in his St. Matthew’s Passion. But I first became familiar with this melody as a teenager in a secular English version known as “Because All Men Are Brothers” with lyrics by Tom Glazer; it was recorded by both The Weavers and Peter, Paul and Mary. After the events of September 11th, 2001, the powerful, timeless melody and those words inspired these variations.”  (Fred Hersch)

On the second evening (Wednesday, 11/8), I will perform Christopher O’Riley’s arrangement of Radiohead’s song Exit Music, which was written specifically for the closing credits of Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film Romeo and Juliet. The song appears on Radiohead’s highly acclaimed third album, OK Computer (1997). In 2003, Christopher O’Riley released True Love Waits (Sony) the first of two CDs of songs by Radiohead arranged for solo piano. Radiohead’s dense, multi-layered music leans heavily on electronic processing for its moody sonic atmospherics; O’Riley evokes those complex textures with abundant but judicious use of the sustain and soft pedals, a deft use of dissonance and a rhythmically anxious left hand. 

On the third evening (Thursday, 11/9), virtuoso Tatjana Rankovich will play Pierre Jalbert’s Toccata. Here are some notes by the composer:

Having grown up as a pianist and being familiar with the toccatas of Schumann, Prokofiev, Rorem, and the like, I had always wanted to write a short, virtuosic work for the piano. I completed Toccata in the spring of 2001, while living in Rome at the American Academy on a Rome Prize fellowship for the year. Set in rondo-like form, the central feature of the piece is a rapid repeated-note figure, which appears in different guises throughout the work. (Pierre Jalbert)

It’s going to be great fun. I hope you come to one or more of the evenings. For further details, go here.

by Joseph Rubenstein
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, S21 Concert

Xantippe’s Rebuke

Leach_Xantippe_sRebuke_pg12[1].pdf 

From Sequenza21 regular Mary Jane Leach: 

Xantippe’s Rebuke, for oboe soloist and eight taped oboes, is an intense study in sound that tickles your ears. It will be performed on the Sequenza 21 Concert by Matt Sullivan. I’ve written about my approach to writing it, which I hope you will find interesting. 

My work has primarily been concerned with exploring sound phenomena – combination, difference and interference tones. I work very carefully with the specific sound properties of each instrument that I write for, qualities that change from instrument to instrument.

Initially this was done in rather direct, almost linear, ways, writing pieces for multiples of instruments, or similar instruments, that I could perform myself, taking advantage of 8-track tape machines to make the pieces. At first I wrote only for instruments that I could play myself (clarinet, bass clarinet, voice).

Two developments that helped me to expand my approach were working with vocal ensembles that could perform my multi-track vocal works, and working with music software on the computer. Using vocal groups freed up the music, releasing it from the constraints of click tracks and the rigidity (both of tempo and dynamics) that resulted from making pieces on tape, opening up the sound. By using the computer and midi playback, I was able to start writing for instruments that I didn’t play. Midi playback enabled me to compose studies of the instruments and to hear the resulting sound phenomena of these instruments without having to go through the laborious task of making multi-track study tapes of the instruments (and dealing with the problems of machines with slightly different speeds).

At first I had to tweak the sounds available to get the right overtone distribution, but eventually I started working with the Proteus instrumental sounds, which, if not perfect, at least are pretty accurate in their overtone profiles.

Writing for solo instruments is a challenge. One of the main problems, at least for me, is that I’m just not interested in even listening to a solo piece (with a few notable exceptions, but those pieces are generally for string instruments that can play multiple stops).

A way around that for me is to write a taped part that a performer plays along with in concert. At first I tried a music minus one approach, but quickly realized that that just didn’t work. If the taped parts and the live parts need to match in sound quality, then the live part is never going to match the taped sound, so the live part will either stick out like a sore thumb or will be masked by the taped parts. I tried a music plus one approach, in which the entire piece is on tape and then I augmented it in performance, but that would be too boring for anyone else to perform. I wanted to write pieces for soloists that they would want to perform and that would give them some freedom.

So I finally decided to write a solo piece that would be played with a taped part of multiples of that instrument, a sort of concerto. The taped parts would be equal and interdependent, while the solo part would be a “real” solo, in which the performer has some flexibility.

Xantippe’s Rebuke works very carefully with the unique sound of the oboe. (The partials of the oboe are so intense, that I had to stop using headphones while I worked on the piece.) The taped oboes are written to exploit its sound properties. I started with unison pitches that created the richest sound and built the piece from there. Most of the subsequent pitches and phrases that I wrote sounded acoustically before I notated them later on in the piece, and these in turn created other sound phenomena. So, in effect, the nature of the oboe and its natural sound properties determined the direction of the piece. Panning affects what happens sonically, and I worked with that. I also used panning to give cues to the performer (in addition to pitch cues), as an aid to orientation.

The solo part starts off by playing notes that are being created, but not notated or played, on the tape (sound phenomena), continuing on to play a melody that “floats” above the taped oboes.works very carefully with the unique sound of the oboe. (The partials of the oboe are so intense, that I had to stop using headphones while I worked on the piece.) The taped oboes are written to exploit its sound properties. I started with unison pitches that created the richest sound and built the piece from there. Most of the subsequent pitches and phrases that I wrote sounded acoustically before I notated them later on in the piece, and these in turn created other sound phenomena. So, in effect, the nature of the oboe and its natural sound properties determined the direction of the piece. Panning affects what happens sonically, and I worked with that. I also used panning to give cues to the performer (in addition to pitch cues), as an aid to orientation. The solo part starts off by playing notes that are being created, but not notated or played, on the tape (sound phenomena), continuing on to play a melody that “floats” above the taped oboes.

When it came time to name this piece, I was having a difficult time. I went through old notebooks to find an inspiration. Years ago, I had jotted down “Xantippe,” because I liked the name, and I decided that I’d like to use it. One, I thought it would be great to have a piece that began with “X” and two, I thought Xantippe had gotten a bum rap through the centuries. She was the wife of Socrates, and was known for being a scold. But since Socrates didn’t work and hung out all day talking with his followers while she ran the household, I think that characterization is unfair. I might have done more than dump the contents of the chamber pot on his head. This piece is Xantippe’s chance to speak up on her behalf.

by David Salvage
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Scores

Nail-Biting Time

The clock is ticking and things are pretty tense here in the old control room.  The fate of the Republic hangs in the balance.  I refer, of course, not just to next week’s election which is only the most important one we’ve had in the past 250 years but to tonight’s showdown between number 3 West Virginia (yea) and number 5 Louisville (boo).  May rightousness (my team) prevail in both encounters.

With that in mind, it seems like a good day to talk about graphic scores.  What are they?  Who does them?  And, most importantly, why?  Start here with Roger Bourland’s post about George Crumb, which is accompanied by a score that looks like a seating plan of Giants Statium laid out for a Stones concert.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Music Events, S21 Concert

BETTER THAN SEX—results guaranteed!!!!

Got your attention, right? No, this is not spam.

My piece objects for marimba, piano and electronic organ is going to be premiered at the Sequenza 21 concert on November 20th. The performers will be Hugh Sung (electronic organ), Daniel Beliavsky (piano) and Bill Solomon (marimba). I encountered Hugh through MySpace, and it turns out we both live and work in the Philadelphia area, Hugh being a fantastic pianist at the Curtis Institute of Music and a fellow technologist. We’ve done a podcast together at his studio at Curtis, and I’m delighted he’s participating in this event. Daniel teaches at NYU and is also a composer, while Bill is an expert marimbist in the Hartford, CT area.

objects score

At the time that I was writing objects, I was teaching a college course in computer science; the work’s title comes from a programming construct in which blocks of computer code are organized into reusable units called objects. This is similar to how most of the piece is made up of repetitive, reusable groups of notes and rhythms, and is a feature of most of my music since the early 80’s.

I wrote objects pretty much over a weekend in 1999, although it took me two months to finalize everything. I was playing with three rhythmic fragments on my synthesizer, all in 7/16 time but with the three possible beat structures (3+2+2 vs 2+3+2 vs 2+2+3). Initially I had the keyboard play the patterns back at superhuman speeds, which was pretty interesting, but it was even more interesting when the tempo was slowed down. The entire work resulted largely from these three fragments, and only in two measures does the meter change from 7/16, namely 11/16. I wrote objects for my daughter, Arielle, who was almost four at the time.

objects is a piece that I have always thought of as my most “fun” piece. It’s very accessible, and unlike some of my other music that tends to run an hour or even more than two hours in duration (cantorials, textbook, for philip glass), objects lasts only around 11 minutes.

objects will be the finale of the concert in November, so please don’t leave early (if for no other reason than there will be a really nice party after the concert!). If you need some further convincing about sitting through until the end of the concert, click here…

by David Toub
CDs, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Orchestral

Jerry’s Favorites for November

Gloryland
Anonymous 4 with Darol Anger and Mike Marshall
Harmonia Mundi

Appalachian songs of faith and hope sung with passion and amazing grace by the gifted ladies of Anonymous 4.  Unlike the New England Presbyterian and Methodist “high church” affirmations of American Angels, these are the songs of tent revivals and roadside tabernacles, soul music for people like me who grew up in deep hollows, surrounded by ancient worn mountains.  The virtuoso fiddle, mandolin and guitar accompaniment of Mike Marshall and Darol Anger add exactly the right note of “high lonesome” authenticity and give Gloryland the joyous sense of music lived, not just performed.

Arvo Pärt: Da pacem
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Paul Hillier
Harmonia Mundi

Stunningly powerful sacred music from another isolated corner of the globe by Arvo Pärt, arguably the most popular  contemporary composer alive.  These shorter pieces range from the recent–Da pacem Domine, a quiet and powerful prayer for peace composed in 2004–to the early and glorious Magnificat, written in 1989.  Of special note is the world premiere recording of Pärt’s Two Slavonic Psalms (1997), his first acappella work using the “tintinnabuli” style.  The Eastonian Chamber Choir, under Paul Hillier’s direction, is magnificent.

Five Sonatas
Andrew Rangell, piano
Bridge

 Despite a continuing battle with dystonia in one hand that sidelined him completely for seven years after 1991 and has since severely limited his performing career, Andrew Rangell has built a reputaton as one of the great living pianists.  His few public performances in recent years are legendary but he has maintained his reputation mainly through a series of extraordinary recordings like this one–his fifth for Bridge–and one of his absolute finest.  Here are five 20th century sonatas by four of the century’s leading composers–George Enescu, Igor Stravinsky, Leoš Janáček, and Ernesto Halffter, who accounts for two of the sonatas, dated nearly 60 years apart.  Rangell’s playing is so highly personal and unconventional, his interpretations so brilliant but quirky, that he is inevitably compared to Glenn Gould, although Rangell is stylistically more adventuresome. 

Declarations: Music Between the Wars
Pacifica Quartet Quartets by Paul Hindemith, Leoš Janáček and Ruth Crawford Seeger
Cedille

Three treasures of the post-war years played with enormous skill and passion by one of the best of the current crop of string quartet players.  Janácek’s String Quartet No. 2, “Intimate Letters,” written in 1928, the year of his death, is an astonishing final valentine to his longtime muse Kamila Stösslová, a woman half his age, with whom he had a fervent, but platonic, relationship. It is also one of the greatest of all string quartets and the Pacifica deliver a magnificent performance.  Paul Hindemith’s String Quartet No. 4 of 1922 is not played that much these days which is unfortunate because it, also, belongs in the pantheon of great string quartet music.  The unexpected delight here is Ruth Crawford Seeger’s String Quartet of 1931,  a spiky, dramatic gem that demonstrates that she was every bit as good as the boys and makes one wish she had been less of a dutiful wife.

Ives: String Quartets Nos 1 & 2
Blair String Quartet
Naxos
 

Ives wrote his First Quartet when he was a mere 22 and it provides an early example of his unorthodox creative style and his generous borrowing of revival and gospel hymns as musical sources. The much more complex Second String Quartet was written over a long period–between 1907-1913–and reflects his contempt for the polite drawing room chamber music of a genteel age. Ives himself summarised the work’s program as: ‘four men – who converse, discuss, argue … fight, shake hands, shut up – then walk up the mountainside to view the firmament’. No girly-man, Charlie. Vanderbilt University’s Blair String Quartet play up a storm.

Jacob Druckman, Stephen Hartke, Augusta Read Thomas
New York Philharmonic conducted by Lorin Maazel
New World Records

 World-premiere recordings of orchestral works by three of the most acclaimed contemporary American composers.  I heard this performance of Stephen Hartke’s Symphony No. 3 (for countertenor, two tenor, and baritone soli with orchestra) on the original radio broadcast in September 2003 and was so haunted by it that I regularly checked over the next couple of years to see if it had been released on CD.  The recording holds up so well on second and third hearing that I’m almost reluctant to mention that it is a September 11 remembrance piece commissioned by Maazel because its transcends any particular moment in time.  The symphony features the voices of the Hilliard Ensemble with a setting of a poem by an 8th century Anglo-Saxon writer musing on the past splendor of an ancient Roman city now in ruins and is cast in one movement consisting of four, smaller sections.  It is a haunting and shattering work.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Music Events, Philadelphia

Philadelphia Sounds: Fresh Ink at Kimmel Center

The advantage of calling the Kimmel Center’s new music series Fresh Ink is that “fresh” is relative, combining “new” with “refreshing” on this program of music for violin, Jennifer Koh, and piano, Reiko Uchida, ranging from 1942 to the present.
 
“Relax, and leave the driving to us,” John Adams recommends for his 1995 Road Movies. Lively, energetic, light, the piano ground rolls along with violin commentary; repetitive, but with enough variation to be identifiably Adams. But then the ground switches to violin with percussive piano punctuation. When the piano ground returns, it’s almost an old soothing friend, and the commentary has a jazzy swing. The very slow hypnotic second movement has a motif that extends and elongates in a duet. The closing is back to a fast ride with jagged non-stop rhythms.
 
Gyorgy Kurtag pulled together short selections from earlier pieces Signs, Games and Messages for solo violin in 1995. Distilled and intense is how the soloist describes this Romanian composer’s work; I would add short and percussive phrases, and vastly differing moods – violence, sorrow, folk music, dance and classic Bach.
 
In Lou Harrison’s 1998 Grand Duo you hear long echoes of held notes in the piano, under a scalar motif with violin melody above. The “estampe” movement reminded me of the Adams in its ground and cadenza format, but not as user-friendly.  The center movement is a spare and delicate counterpoint, the slow movement is two melodies played simultaneously, and the close is a lively polka that just ate up the bow.
 
Poulenc’s 1942 Violin Sonata references Spanish music in this commemoration of Lorca. The first movement is a rhythmic theme and development with a surprisingly sweet and poignant melody. Poulenc quotes Lorca’s poem “the guitar makes dreams weep” for the second movement and its plucked strings, muted melody and romantic lushness. The presto tragico movement has internal contrasts, minor versus major, serious versus sweet melodies, dense notes versus open space, and a sudden ending.
 
And then we come to the world premiere of String Poetic by Philadelphia composer Jennifer Higdon – five poetic songs based on her own poems – a series of visual impressions: jagged climb, nocturne, blue hills of mist, maze mechanical and climb jagged.  Each of these is a stand-alone work, in particular the ineffably poignant “piece of night – night of peace” Nocturne. Blue Hills of Mist begins so smoothly it seems an extension of the Nocturne, but includes some of the Jagged Climb influence in its increasing drama and grandeur; the plucked string effect in both piano and violin has an Oriental effect that ends in mid-air. Amazing Mechanical explores a maze of speeds without losing its forward momentum, and Climb Jagged reprises the rhythmic opening.
Fresh Ink Series
Kimmel Center
Philadelphia, Pa
October 21, 2006
(Reposted from Penn Sounds 10/26/06)

by Deborah
Classical Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Festivals, Music Events, Other Minds, San Francisco

Other Minds, Other Places

Our friends at the Other Minds new music community have announced the program for their 12th Other Minds Music Festival and, as usual, it is a dandy.  This year offers a rare opportunity to hear important works by eight of today’s most innovative composers, invited by Other Minds Executive Director and Festival Artistic Director Charles Amirkhanian.

On the program are American premieres from two of contemporary classical world’s elder statesmen, Per Nørgård of Denmark and Peter Sculthorpe of Australia, as well as guest composers Maja Ratkje (Norway), Joëlle Léandre (France), Ronald Bruce Smith (Canada), Daniel David Feinsmith (U.S.), Markus Stockhausen (Germany), and Tara Bouman (Netherlands).

The annual festival begins with three days of private retreat for guest composers, and continues with concerts and panel discussions at the Jewish Community Center, San Francisco, December 8-9-10, 2006.

The dates are Friday, Dec. 8 (8pm); Saturday, Dec. 9 (8pm); and Sunday, Dec. 10 (2pm), 2006, at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco’s Kanbar Hall, 3200 California St. at Presidio Ave. Panel discussions with composers and performers, hosted by Charles Amirkhanian, begin one hour prior to each concert.  The program is here.

Other places:  Our friend Brian Sacawa, saxophonist extraordinaire, has buffed up his blog, Sounds Like Now, and moved it to a new location.  Go visit.

If this page looks funny to you and you are using a PC, it is probably because you are using Internet Explorer 6 or earlier.  You can fix this problem in about three minutes by going here and downloading and installing IE 7.  It’s free and painless.  (You Mac users are on your own.)

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, S21 Concert, Violin

Hmm . . .

Hey Folks —

Don’t know how we managed to scoop the Times on this one.  But here’s an interview with violinist Jeffrey Phillips, who’s doing many honors on next month’s Sequenza21 concert.  The interview has to do with a certain set of violin solos by a composer who will be familiar to those who wander these parts.  Enjoy!

jeff_phillips.JPG
Q. You’re going to be giving the U.S. premiere of two works for solo violin by Tom Myron on the first-ever Sequenza21 Concert. Are they hard?
A. “They are as difficult as one would expect two pieces that were written for Peter Sheppard-Skaerved and having their U.S. premiere to be. (That means yes.)”
Q. New Music types are obsessed with questions of style and influence. What style does Tom Myron write in. Is he a post-minimalist or a post-modernist or what? Style-wise is he ripping anyone off?
A. “I don’t know what kind of –ist(s) Tom or his music are, but it does seem as if he’s ripped off pretty much everyone including the poor guy at the 7-11 down the street.  I guess those New Music types will just have to come to the concert and find out for themselves what –ist(s) Tom and his music are. I know I’m gonna.”
Q. According to the composer one of the pieces takes its inspiration from a poem by Ted Hughes and the other from a drawing by an 18th century German woman naturalist working in the Caribbean. Can you tell this just by playing them? Which is which?
 A. “No, I can’t tell which is which just by playing them. Tom even told me which one was inspired by a poem by Ted Hughes and which one was inspired by Maria Sibylla Merian’s  “A Surinam caiman fighting a South American false coral snake” and I still can’t keep them straight. I have caimans fighting poems and a snake arranged as a haiku stuck in my head.”
Q. Does it psych you out to be giving the U.S. premieres of two pieces that have been played all over the world by Naxos recording artist and violin god Peter Sheppard-Skaerved?
A. “Yes, of course, there is a little psyching out going on. Peter Sheppard-Skaerved has given the premieres of these two pieces (and numerous others) all over the world. Except in the U.S. That’s me.”
Q. Is Jeffrey Phillips a violin god?
A. “In the omnipotent/omnipresent sense, no. In the Greek sense, yes.”

by David Salvage
CDs, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Strange

Waltzing Across Texas

Anthony Tommasini has a eulogy today for the much-loved and soon to be gone forever classical music department at Tower Records at Lincoln Center.  It was probably the last place in the universe where a perfect stranger would come up to you as you were reading the back of a CD and say “I happened to catch the Sawallisch performance when it was recorded in Vienna. It’s much better.”  Sometimes, that person was Sawallisch.

Strange story here about a Texas grandmother who was convicted in New York yesterday of purloining some Glenn Gould memorabilia about 20 years ago and was caught after selling them last year.  My favorite part of the story is the bit about her lawyer, a fellow Texan, thought he would score points with a New York jury by suggesting that her cover story about how the papers were given to her by a now dead curator was true because the guy was gay and, thus, untrustworthy.  There really are two Americas. 

Yet another music social networking site.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Music Events, S21 Concert

Sequenza21 Concert: Lawrence Dillon’s “Singing silver”

Third installment of a series of Composer Perspectives previewing the November 20th Sequenza21 Concert.

First of all, many thanks to all the people doing the behind-the-scenes work to make the upcoming Sequenza21 concert happen. It’s a daunting task, bringing all of these disparate voices together. I wonder if concertgoers don’t routinely underestimate the headaches that are hidden behind any successful performance.

I’m very curious to hear the music on this concert, having come to know all of the composers a bit online and not at all in person. But I’m uncertain which pieces I will actually be sitting in the audience for. At some point in the evening, I will be on the stage, performing in the premiere of Singing silver with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE).

Scored for narrator, soprano, horn, cello and guitar, Singing silver is my latest attempt to combine words and music in a way that fully satisfies the needs of each. The narrator (me) speaks most of the text, with phrases spinning freely off of specific beats in the score. The soprano (Tony Arnold) echoes some of the text, but more often blends wordlessly with the instruments, acting as a connective sinew between the muscle of poetry and the bone of music.

Similarly, the words of Singing silver are the tissue that connects the person I’ve become with the child I once was. We all have rites of passage; mine took place in an autumn dusk, walking home from school, stepping into a busy street for God knows what reason.

Here is the text:

I was crossing the road on an autumn afternoon when a spark in the pavement caught my eye,
sun low in the sky.
I dropped to the ground on one red knee and peered into the black and gold,
as the day grew old.

Sixteen thousand jewels I found shattering the autumn light,
while the air prepared to greet the night.
Sixteen thousand diamonds calling colors to the sky
Sixteen thousand stars and crowns astounding to the eye

But I knew the ones you’d love.

I will bring them home to show to you.
I will bring them home to give to you.
I will bring them home.

I was crossing the road on an autumn afternoon when a lonely tone caught my ear,
a careful keening, strangely near.
I stopped and listened to the sky, sun angled to my right,
clutching at the night.

Sixteen thousand sounds I found shattering the autumn air,
as the day rolled over in bewildered prayer.
Sixteen thousand fragments tumbling through the atmosphere
Sixteen thousand jangled dreams rebounding in the ear

But I knew the ones you’d love.

I will bring them home to show to you.
I will bring them home to give to you.
I will bring them home.

I was crossing the road on an autumn afternoon when a flash of metal spun me round,
and up off the ground.
I thrust my arms out left and right, sun darting under me,
fleeing westerly.

And then I saw him, sitting near, laughing gently at the blurring cars
Singing silver in my ear, like sixteen thousand dangled stars.
Sixteen thousand silent smiles shining in the mist
Sixteen thousand aspirations dancing in his fist.

And I knew that he would love you.

Come home with me, I have someone to show you.
Come home with me, I have someone to give you
Come home.

by Lawrence Dillon