In
these days of swiping right and hooking up, having a long-term commitment is something
special. So when the Orchestra of St. Luke’s founded the Robert
DeGaetano Composition Institute with plans to carry on for 15 years, that is
cause for celebration. RDCI is funded by
the estate of the Juilliard-trained pianist and composer Robert DeGaetano, who
passed away in 2015. Each year until
2033, four composers at the beginning of their career will be selected for the
Institute. They’re given one-on-one guidance and instruction from a mentor
composer (Anna Clyne in 2019) for several months, a week-long residency
in New York during which they take part in professional development sessions, and
a chance to work with the musicians of the OSL, workshopping their compositions
and ultimately getting a public performance.
The
Robert DeGaetano Composition Institute launched this year with four composers
selected from a field of over 100 applicants: Liza Sobel, Jose
Martinez, James Diaz, and Viet Cuong. On July 19, 2019, the
Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Ben Gernon conducting, brought four new pieces
to the public, performing a world premiere by each composer at The DiMenna
Center. The program was a diverse collection of background and styles. If these
works had any one thing in common, it was how well they all painted a visual
picture, and created a sense of place with their music.
Liza
Sobel’s Sandia Reflections was inspired by a halting tramway journey
into the mountains. Her work echoed the experience of the tram periodically lurching
to a stop to allow oncoming traffic to pass. Sobel’s piece was cinematic in
nature; melodic and cheerful, with robust use of brass, winds and percussion. Sporadic
cascading motifs led to a conclusion with the kind of calm serenity that the
composer, in her remarks before the performance, said that she experienced when
she finally arrived to her mountain destination.
In
his comments to the audience, Jose Martinez confided to the audience that it
was the first time any of his music was performed in New York. His En El
Otro Lado / On the Other Side was a dramatic aural painting that opened
with dark, mysterious chords, giving way to pizzicato strings and percussion
which drove home a sense of urgency. After an intense and turbulent section
that was punctuated by the insistent thud of the timpani, a rapid decrescendo
brought the work to its conclusion; ending, effectively, with a measure of
silence.
James
Diaz’s Detras de un muro de ilusiones / Behind a wall of illusions was
inspired by the work of a visual artist and a Beatles song. In his composition,
dissonant sonorities in the strings created an aural canvas over which large
waves of chords floated.
Viet
Cuong’s idea for Bullish was sparked by a Picasso drawing in which the
artist captured the essence of an animal with a simple line or two. OSL embraced
the whimsey of opening tango of Cuong’s piece, with a varied texture
characterized by muted trumpets. Over the course of the lively work, the rhythms
morphed into increasingly irregular patterns. As the piece progressed, many of the
orchestral elements were pared away, exposing several instruments in solo
lines.
With
his posthumous gift, DeGaetano created a legacy – one that will help 60
emerging composers over the next 15 years advance their careers.
On Saturday June 1st at Miller Theatre at 7:30 PM, Louis Karchin and David Fulmer will lead the Orchestra of the League of Composers in a program of contemporary works, including two premieres.
Karchin’s premiered work is Four Songs on Poems by Seamus Heaney, performed by soprano Heather Buck. Since I heard her in the title role of Charles Wuorinen’s opera Haroun and the Sea of Stories, I have been a great admirer of Buck’s singing . Heaney’s poetry is another touchstone, making this work one I am particularly keen to hear.
Friedrich Heinrich Kern will perform his commissioned piece for glass harmonica and orchestra with the ensemble. Kern is a virtuoso glass harmonica player, and the choreographic component of pieces for this instrument, in addition to the attractive language in which Kern composes, promises something very different from the usual fare at League concerts.
Curtis Macomber, a mainstay on the New York new music scene, will be the soloist in Martin Boykan’sConcerto for Violin and Orchestra. To celebrate Thea Musgrave’s ninetieth birthday, the strings of the orchestra will perform the composer’s Aurora.
Event Details
Orchestra of the League of Composers
Saturday, June 1, 2019, 7:30 PM
Miller Theatre at Columbia University
Louis Karchin, Music Director and Conductor
David Fulmer, Conductor
Heather Buck, Soprano
Curtis Macomber, Violin soloist
Martin Boykan: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra
Louis Karchin: Four Songs on Poems on Seamus Heaney
Friedrich Heinrich Kern: Von Taufedern und Sternen (Of Dew Feathers and Stars)
Barre Phillips
Zürcher Gallery
By Christian Carey
Sequenza 21
May 20, 2019
Barre Phillips
NEW YORK – ECM Records has released a number of great solo bass recordings. The label’s producer, Manfred Eicher, was himself a bassist, and he has invited a number of fellow low string players to record for ECM. Barre Phillips is a pathfinder in the genre, releasing one of the first solo bass recordings, Journal Violone, on Opus One in 1968. Eicher and he have been keen collaborators for many years, beginning in 1971 with a duo recording of Phillips with Dave Holland, Music from Two Basses, the first of its kind, which was followed by a number of solo and ensemble outings for ECM. In 2018, the imprint released what was announced as Phillips last solo CD, End to End, which he called the last entry in his “Journal Violone.”
It has been more than thirty years since Phillips last performed in New York. Originally from San Francisco and long a resident of France, much of the bassist’s career has been made playing in Europe. On Monday, May 20th, he appearedat the Zürcher Gallery, an art venue on Bleecker Street in lower Manhattan. The crowd was standing room only and contained a number of jazz and experimental music luminaries. They were attentive and enthusiastic throughout.
Phillips turns eighty-five in October. In his performance on Monday night, he appeared energetic and fit. He easily hoisted a sizeable double bass to his shoulder, and deftly moved it around to play its entirety: not just the strings. His playing and demeanor are vibrant, inquisitive, and often imbued with puckish humor.
The bassist gave a veritable masterclass of standard and extended playing techniques. The latter appear prolifically on End to End, among them high harmonics, different varieties of strumming such as plucking notes with both hands, a number of approaches to bowing, microtones, glissandos, and all manner of percussive playing. However, the CD intersperses these with a fair bit of cantabile playing. Less of that was on offer live. Instead, with a mischievous twinkle and disarming banter, Phillips went to work showing what it meant to “do your own thing” when, as he described it, career paths in more traditional jazz and classical music were denied him.
Each piece, most of them improvised but some selections fromEnd to End that had been crafted into compositions, centered on a different palette of techniques. At times Phillips played his instrument caressingly, seeming to coax delicate high notes and thrumming vibrations from the strings at a pianissimo dynamic. At others, he virtually attacked the instrument, scratching it from stem to stern with his bow. If a luthier were in attendance, they would have likely had a panic attack.
There was considerable variation in the harmonic vocabulary employed. Some of the music was in the ‘out’ post-tonal language of free jazz. Phillips also supplied an etude of octaves, another of open string drones, a third a chameleon-like shift to Eastern scales and gestures, and on “Inner Door, Pt. 4,” a plaintive modal jazz solo grounded in double-stopped fifths. Here, as elsewhere, Phillips displayed a penchant for executing a long, unerringly controlled decrescendo, bringing the music to a whispered close. Zürcher was an ideal location in which to hear these small details: an intimate space but one with good acoustics.
It is unfortunate that New Yorkers haven’t had more opportunities to hear Barre Phillips up close and personal. His performance was an unforgettable experience. Phillips joins Mat Maneri, Emilie Lesbros, and Hank Roberts for a performance on Saturday night at 8 PM at Brooklyn’s I-Beam. One more chance …
-Christian Carey
On Wednesday May 8th, Urban Playground Chamber Orchestrapresents the New York premiere of Florence Price’s Violin Concerto No. 2, music by Harry T. Burleigh, and a rarely heard oratorio, And They Lynched Him on a Tree, by William Grant Still. The program, titled From Song Came Symphony. fits the ensemble’s mandate to prioritize the performance of composers who are women and people of color. It focuses on the legacy of Burleigh. I recently caught up with UPCO’s conductor Thomas Cunningham, who told me more about the concert.
Cunningham says, ”I found programmatic inspiration in Jay-Z lyrics: Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther could walk / Martin Luther walked so Barack Obama could run / Barack Obama ran so all the children could fly.”
“Burleigh wrote art songs so that the following generation – William Grant Still, William Dawson, and Florence Price – could write symphonies and concert works. Burleigh’s incorporation of African American music into Western art music, and his advocacy for this new American music genre through his work at Ricordi, had a vast influence on remarkable composers of color in America.”
Florence Price’s work has recently been receiving significant attention. Cunningham feels that Violin Concerto No. 2 will be a highlight of the concert. “Price’s second violin concerto is wonderfully idiosyncratic. The concerto is in so many places defined by its subtle and yet robust brass writing, atypical especially for a concerto for string instrument. All the while, this work demonstrates a novel voice, both aware and in touch with various traditions, but carving out singular nuance and identity.”
UNC-Chapel Hill Ph.D. candidate Kori Hill will deliver a pre-concert lecture at the event. Of Price’s work, she says, “This concerto, completed just one year before Price’s untimely death in 1953, is a fascinating example of her applications of African American vernacular and Western classical principles. It is an important component to understanding and fully appreciating her contributions to American classical music. We hope Price’s Violin Concerto No. 2 becomes a staple of the violin repertory in the years to come.”
In addition to the aforementioned works, the program also includes a movement from Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony. Cunningham says that the included excerpt is connected to multiple pieces on the program. “Incorporating the Largo from Dvorak 9 serves a dual purpose: first, to demonstrate the tangible connection between the spirituals sung by Burleigh to Dvorak, and second, to mirror the premiere of Still’s And They Lynched Him on a Tree, which also included the movement.”
This is the fifth year that UPCO has been active. Their advocacy is laudable, and the group has musicianship to match its ambition. Cunningham and company are persuasive performers of both standard-era repertoire and more recent music. May 8th’s concert should be a memorable one.
Event Info
Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra and Harry T. Burleigh Society present
Seattle Symphony’s [untitled] series was inaugurated in 2012 by its then-new Music Director, Ludovic Morlot. Three Fridays a year, small groupings of Symphony and visiting musicians set up in the Grand Lobby outside the orchestra’s main Benaroya Hall venue for a late night of contemporary music. This year’s series has been devoted to the European avant-garde, starting with Hans Abrahamsen’s Schnee in October and continuing this past March 22 with two landmarks of Darmstadt serialism: Berio’s Circles and Boulez’s sur Incises. The latter performance, which featured Morlot conducting the work’s regional premiere, offered an opportunity to contemplate the legacies of both the late composer and Morlot himself, who departs at the end of the season after an enormously impactful eight-year run.
Morlot conducting sur Incises (photos by James Holt/Seattle Symphony except as noted)
That the program would center on plucked and struck instruments was obvious from the seating arrangement, which snaked around the extensive percussion setups required for both pieces, not to mention a total of three pianos and four harps. Indeed, the only true sustaining voice among the deployed forces was the soprano in Circles. Dating from 1960, this work’s title is generally held to refer to its unusual structure: five settings of E. E. Cummings, of which the first and last use the same poem, as do the second and fourth. The evening’s performance emphasized the work’s continuity as a single 20-minute span, beginning and ending with ametric but strictly notated music, while reaching peak spontaneity in the middle section where Berio employs the proportional notation developed by Cage in Music of Changes, along with “improvisation frames” where the percussionists are given latitude within a set of specified pitches and instruments:
Seeing the work live, with the instruments positioned in accordance with Berio’s meticulous instructions, reveals an additional meaning to the title: the two percussionists (in this case Symphony members Matt Decker and Michael Werner) are frequently obliged to pirouette to execute their parts.
Rounding out the quartet was Seattle Symphony harpist Valerie Muzzolini and Maria Männistö, the Symphony’s “go to” soprano both for Finnish language works and for modern compositions with extraordinary demands, including Circles’ array of whispered, intoned and conventionally sung sounds originally designed for Cathy Berberian. Berio also frequently directs the singer to cue the three instrumentalists behind her (the score explicitly states that there should be no conductor). Not surprisingly it was Männistö (the English pronunciation rhymes with banister), who gave the last performance of Circles in the Northwest (with Seattle Modern Orchestra in 2011).
Critics usually position Circles within the heyday of post-WW2 musical pointillism. But I also see it as a primary source for George Crumb’s mature style. Its instrumentation—with piano/celesta substituting for harp—is duplicated in Night Music I (1963), the earliest Crumb piece that sounds like Crumb. And the ambiance of Circle’s middle movement, as well as Berio’s concept of extended staging, can be seen as starting points for Crumb’s own textural sparseness and emphasis on ritualized instrumental performance.
Michael Werner and Maria Männistö in Circles
With sur Incises (1996–98) Seattle at last received an entrée-sized portion of Morlot-conducted Boulez. Other than the brief and relatively mellow Notations I–IV (whose recording was one of my 2018 picks), Boulez’s music has been strangely absent from Symphony programming, even under the Directorship of his compatriot and mentee, so the showcasing of this formidable 40-minute piece felt particularly momentous.
Like most of Boulez’s music from the 1970s onward, sur Incises includes several passages that feature a steady beat and rapidly repeated notes. A good example is the Messiaenesque gamelan heard halfway through the first of its two “moments”, which coupled with the work’s unique instrumentation (three trios of piano, harp and mallet-centric percussion) gives the impression of a post-serial Reich (though Robin Maconie claims Stockhausen’s Mantra as a precedent). Another remarkable passage is the Nancarrow-like tutti about five minutes before the end. At other times, dazzling flurries are juxtaposed with calmer passages (the above links are to Boulez’s own performance with Ensemble intercontemporain, available in the 13-CD Deutsche Grammophon set of his complete works, which I review here).
The dominant motive in the piece, though, is a short-long rhythmic gesture akin to what drummers call a flam. It’s audible in the first piano right at the beginning, and recurs throughout the work, often with the short note in a different instrument than the subsequent clang. To pull off such highly coordinated music, the performers must not only know their parts cold, but must also coalesce into an incredibly tight ensemble. Only then does the ultimate interpretive goal become attainable: articulating the composite lines that traverse the three trios, and emphasizing the multilevel climaxes, anticipations and resolutions that drive this unceasingly complex music forward. As guest pianist Jacob Greenberg put it, “every phrase in the piece has a goal”. Not only was the band up to the task, but, in contrast with the introverted, austere sound world of Schnee, whose October performance benefitted from a measure of Dausgaardian reticence, tonight’s sur Incises profited from Morlot’s ever-present exuberance. Wouldn’t a future guest engagement with him conducting Rituel (in memoriam Bruno Maderna) be a treat?
The stereotype of Boulez as the ultimate cerebral composer is belied by his extraordinary command of instrumental color, something that always gave his music an edge over the legions of academic composers with a similar bent. Morlot and company’s rendering of this score reinforced Boulez’s proper place within the long line of French composers—from Berlioz, Debussy, Ravel and Messiaen onward to the spectralists—who have been infatuated with color and organic, self-generating form.
Ligeti: Poème Symphonique at the first [untitled], October 2012 with Ludovic Morlot in the background (photo: Michael Schell)Boulez’s death in 2016 marked, if not the end of an era, the passing of its last undisputed superstar. And as Morlot took the microphone after the performance to acknowledge the [untitled] audience for the last time (the season’s final [untitled] event will have a guest conductor), a similar sense of poignant conclusion fell over the house. Though Seattle and its Symphony shared a longstanding, if erratic, history of support for contemporary music prior to Morlot’s arrival, there’s little doubt about the reinvigorating effect of a tenure that has brought forth not only the [untitled] concept, but also the Symphony’s new Octave 9 space (dedicated primarily to small-scale new music events) and an impressive series of regional and world premieres on the mainstage. One local musician prominent in new music circles told me “I was about ready to give up on Seattle before Morlot came”. And the feat of turning out a large and enthusiastic crowd for two thorny exemplars of Darmstadt dissonance in this most outlying of Lower 48 metropolises speaks for itself.
As a concluding round of hoots and applause died down, one could observe more than a few lumpy throats and damp eyes among the assembled Seattleites who left Benaroya Hall contemplating the departure of an exceptionally charismatic and personable conductor who has succeeded beyond all expectations at winning the hearts and minds of the city.
Thomas Dausgaard conducting members of Seattle Symphony in Abrahamsen: Schnee (photo: James Holt/Seattle Symphony)
[untitled] is the moniker given by Seattle Symphony to its thrice-annual Friday night new music events. Staged in the lobby of Benaroya Hall, it’s a semi-formal atmosphere in which the Symphony can deploy its musicians in smaller groupings better suited to the exigencies of postmodern music. The first [untitled] concert of the new season took place on October 12, and featured the regional premiere of Hans Abrahamsen’s Schnee, offering listeners in the Pacific Northwest an opportunity to judge how well this work has earned the considerable attention it has received in its brief ten-year lifetime.
Scored for two piano quartets (one conventional, the other with woodwinds instead of strings) flanking a central percussionist, this hour-long piece is officially a chain of ten canons conceived in pairs. But don’t bother looking for Row, Row, Row Your Boat-style rounds. Abrahamsen’s vision of musical canons ranges from relatively straightforward imitation between two voices in stretto…
From Canon 2b (other instruments omitted)
…to rhythm-only canons, to cases where the only trace of a traditional canon is the successive entries of similar lines:
(click to enlarge)
It’s probably easiest to think of the canons as a set of ten segued movements in which each instrumental group stays within a tight-knit band of musical material. An important structural characteristic of the piece is that these canons get progressively shorter, starting with 8–9 minutes allotted to the distended Canons 1a and 1b, and ending with the fleeting Canons 5a and 5b, lasting a minute apiece (audio links and the YouTube embed above are from the work’s only commercial recording, by ensemble recherche).
Accompanying this process of diminution is a corresponding process of detuning where the string instruments, then the woodwinds, shift their intonation downwards by 1/6 and 1/3 tones so that they gradually go out of tune with the pianos. Mikhail Shmidt, violinist for the [untitled] performance, likens the effect to melting. Such a reliance on “dirty” intonational clashs—most prominent in Canons 5a/5b—reflects the influence of Abrahamsen’s teacher, Ligeti. In a particularly imaginative stroke, three Interludes are inserted as composed tuning breaks to allow the musicians to effect the retuning without a break:
Ritual orchestral tuning is often satirized, and audiences will occasionally mistake tuning for an actual piece, but there is little precedent for written-out retuning occurring in the middle of a composition.
Schnee of course means snow in German (curiously favored by this Danish teutophile over his native sne), and this hour-long work is a suitably frosty and brittle affair. It begins and ends in the extreme treble register, and its overall sound world is dominated by white noise effects suggested by the title’s initial consonant. The score calls for scratchy bow noises, the application of Blu Tack to muffle piano strings, and frequent “half-breath” effects on the woodwind instruments (which in the case of the contralto flute and bass clarinet seem to have been specifically chosen for their breathy quality). The percussionist’s job mainly alternates between rubbing writing paper on a smooth surface and rubbing wax paper on a rough surface, the task broken up only by the use of sleigh bells in Canons 4a/4b and a single tamtam stroke at the end of Canon 3b. Other noise effects show the influence of Lachenmann, most notably his piece Guero, whose technique of gliding fingernails across the piano keyboards is directly borrowed in Schnee.
The very first canon fulfils the evocative trajectory of the title, beginning on a repeated violin harmonic on an A♮ that’s so high, you mainly hear bowing noise (the score says “like an icy whisper”, though North American listeners might find it inadvertently reminiscent of a certain cinematic shower scene). Pentatonic white note tinkerings in the 1st Piano’s top octave soon enter (E-A-F-D-E is a prominent pattern), and one might wonder if this will be a characteristically long and static exposition of European postminimalism. But the complexity increases as the canons proceed, reaching an apogee in the third canon pair where the harmonies are atonal, the rhythms unmetered, and the pitch range fully extended to the bass register (intensified by tuning the cello’s lowest string from C down to G). The process then reverses in the last two canon pairs, and we eventually revert to the white note pentatonicism of the opening. It’s the simultaneous revelation of both arch-like vectors (range and complexity) and straight-line vectors (length and detuning) as the work progresses that gives Schnee such dramatic impact.
The influence of Feldman is often close at hand in Abrahamsen’s music, and it’s quite obvious in Schnee’s Canon 3b. But a different parallel can be found with Feldman’s Three Voices, a unique and uncharacteristically texted and beat-driven work from 1982 that in its repetitions, quirky metricality, overall length and architecture based on concurrent unfolding of both linear and arch-shaped processes, is a tantalizing predecessor to Schnee. It even features as its sole lyric this most apropos poetic snippet by Frank O’Hara:
Who’d have thought that snow falls
Schnee is the kind of piece that can die in a too-dry space, but [untitled]’s idiosyncratic venue is just live enough to avoid this pitfall. Being designed as an entry and reception point rather than as a performance space though, it does come at the cost of an omnipresent background rumble from the building’s HVAC system. This often overwhelmed the subtle piano resonance effects and smeared the rhythmic definition of the percussionist’s paper shuffling (both prominent in Canon 3b). But the piece would have gotten lost in either of the two conventional concert spaces at Benaroya Hall, and the capable ensemble, drawn from regular Seattle Symphony musicians with frequent adjuncts Cristina Valdés and Oksana Ezhokina handling the piano parts, managed to traverse the work’s rhythmic complexities with no trace of strain or sloppiness.
They also did something perhaps more remarkable: avoiding the temptation, especially in the excitement of live performance, to play this music too loudly, too quickly and too brashly. Abrahamsen’s bleak snowscapes, like Varèse’s deserts, are those of the mind as much as of nature. What this piece needs is not so much the brisk extroversion of Ludovic Morlot, but a healthy dose of Scandinavian reserve, which it received under the conducting of Thomas Dausgaard, who will assume Morlot’s role as Music Director next season. In this performance, the first of this piece for any of the evening’s musicians (including Dausgaard), we perhaps have a glimpse of the direction that the Symphony’s programming will take under Dausgaard’s leadership.
Hans Abrahamsen (photo: Lars Skaaning)
Abrahamsen, born in 1952, presents an unusual musical example of a late career breakthrough. He started out as a Danish representative of New Simplicity, but much of his music from that period now seems rather…simplistic. After a Schoenbergian decade of relative silence, Abrahamsen reemerged with a more synthetic style that elevated his international profile to the degree that he can now be reasonably considered the most prominent living Danish composer other than the venerable Per Nørgård (1932–).
The best survey of Abrahamsen’s career arc is the Arditti Quartet’s recording of his String Quartets 1–4, whose dates range from 1973 to 2012 (this album was one of my favorites of 2017). His recent hits include some orchestral songs for Barbara Hannigan and a concerto for piano left hand, but these works seem less distinguished to me measured against the formidable European corpus of modernist orchestral music. It’s Schnee, completed in 2008, that continues to stand as Abrahamsen’s masterpiece, comparable in scope and ambition to Haas’ In Vain, and likewise exemplifying the alloy of exploration and consolidation that characterizes the most accomplished of contemporary European art music. Its reputation as one of the classics of the young 21st century (advanced by the likes of Paul Griffiths, who chose it to conclude the current version of his book Modern Music and After), was given powerful witness by Dausgaard and the Seattle Symphony musicians.
Gil Rose directs the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, or BMOP. The orchestra’s in house label, BMOP/Sound, has released a spate of vital CDs of American music. I recently interviewed Rose about recordings already released on the label and a preview of the rest of 2018’s live and recorded events.
In recent years, BMOP has released several recordings that “crossover” into pop, what some writers have described “Indie classical.” Which of these projects do you think have most effectively helped the ensemble to grow musically? Do you approach conducting differently when a groove supplied by a rhythm section or drum kit is part of the proceedings?
Several projects come to mind including Eric Moe’s Kick and Groove both discs we did of Evan Ziporyn’s music and Tony Di Ritis Devolution. I think that when you have a “kit” involved listening is at a premium. At that point its important to share the stage with the drummer and try not to be a groove buster while keeping all the proceedings together. I think there is a lot of trust in the orchestra which empowers the players. That always brings out their best. I think we saw this at its best in our recording of Mackey’s Dreamhouse.
I found BMOP’s Wayne Peterson recording to be fascinating, both because theIre isn’t a comparable disc of his orchestra music and because of the history of his Pulitzer prizewinning piece “The Face of the Night, The Heart of the Dark.” At the time that he won the award, there was some controversy because Ralph Shapey was one of the other finalists and was told his work was rejected in the finals after being recommended by the music subcommittee. He got mad and was very public about it. Listening to the two pieces, they are certainly different but are in the same pocket, relatively speaking: One wonders what all the fuss was about Peterson winning. Did you two discuss the Pulitzer situation at all or do you have any insights?
I never have discussed the Pulitzer “incident” with Wayne. I think the piece is a knockout all by itself. It’s those American orchestral “Tone-Poems” that was likely to be forgotten in spite of the Pulitzer history. Robert Erickson’s Aurorus in the same ilk. There are MANY others. Great works that have been left behind because they require a virtuosic orchestra to pull off but major American orchestras are unwilling to take them on for reasons that personify the stagnation of our orchestral culture.
Paul Moravec’s ‘secular oratorio’ seems to share an affinity with some British pieces in a similar vein: Tippett and Vaughan Williams, for example. Was that on your mind at all when preparing the piece for recording? Congratulations, by the way — it seems like a very challenging work — tough vocal parts as well as an ambitious orchestration — and BMOP/NEC pulled it off without a hitch.
I think you are right to point out the connection to English Music. Though the piece is written for full orchestra it relies primarily on the strings. It gives it a sheen that makes it very exposed for the singers. Also the the vocal writing is tricky because the tonality is extended in the direction of chromatasicm which makes the tunig hard for the singers while they still have to sound lyrical. The subject matter is a challenge as well. The piece luckily (through clever design) has a few lighter moments as well as a good bit of hope to go along with the considerable pathos.
For Innova, BMOP and you recorded Ann Millikan’s “Symphony,” which deals with someone close to her battling cancer? Will you please tell us a little more about the impetus for this piece and the way in which you interpreted its very personal story?
Ann approached BMOP about making a recording of what for her was a very personal work. We were honored that she thought of us. Although the piece is dedicated to, and about someone who died, it actually is more of a portait of his interests and activities. It sort of functions as a celabration of his loves and life. I tried to bring out the character of each movement and how they related to the subject.
Del Tredici’s Child Alice is one of an extensive series of his pieces that are based on Lewis Carroll? How do feel that his take on the stories of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’ are inhabited in the music of “Child Alice?” What did you do to prepare yourself and the musicians for dealing with the particular sound world and quirky expressivity of the piece?
I think the Alice stories and characters gave David the chance to deal in a kind of deep psychological exploration while at the same time show his sheer showmanship. His understanding of how music works at technical and sonic level when married his great sense of theater and sheer insanity creates an experience that you can’t prepare for. All I told the players was buckle up as your about to go several Rabbit Holes at the same time.
Looking ahead to 2018, what are some of the recordings and activities to which BMOP listeners can look forward?
In 2018 we have a full slate of concert and releases. We did a tribute to Joan Tower in February, In April were world premieres by Lei Lang, Anthony Di Ritis, Huang Rou followed by performances at the Library of Congress and June in Buffalo. Upcoming releases include works by Charles Fussell & Peter Child the complete orchestra works of Leon Kirchner, a great Chen Yi CD and Tobias Picker’s Fantastic Mr. Fox and a few other surprises.
Information about BMOP’s first Fall concert is below.
______________
Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) Kicks Off 2018-19 Season with Four Boston Premieres
When: Friday, October 19, 2018, 8:00pm
Where: NEC’s Jordan Hall, 30 Gainsborough Street, Boston
Who: Boston Modern Orchestra Project led by conductor Gil Rose with soloists Hannah Lash (harp) and Colin Currie (percussion)
What: Four Boston Premieres:
Steven Mackey – Tonic
Hannah Lash – Concerto No. 2 for Harp and Orchestra
Violinist Janine Jansen performing with conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin and The Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, 3/13/18. Photo: Steve J. Sherman
New York Premiere of Van Der Aa Violin Concerto
The Philadelphia Orchestra
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Music Director and Conductor
Janine Jansen, Violin
March 13, 2018
Carnegie Hall
Published on Sequenza21.com
By Christian Carey
NEW YORK – Dutch composer Michel Van der Aa (b. 1970) is best known for his imaginative and formidably-constructed multimedia works that incorporate both film and electronics. Notable among these are the operas Blank Out(2016) and Sunken Garden(2012), as well as a music theater work based on Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa’sThe Book of Disquiet (2008). Even pieces for acoustic ensembles, such as the clarinet chamber concerto Hysteresis (2013), have frequently incorporated electronics as part of their makeup. Thus, when Van der Aa composed his Violin Concerto (2014) for soloist Janine Jansen and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the absence of electronics was significant. (Interestingly, after the success of the concerto, his follow up piece for orchestra, Reversal (2016), also abstains from the electronic domain). However, even in the analog realm, Van der Aa incorporates a sound world that acknowledges his interest in decidedly non-classical elements.
The score indicates that the solo violin part should be played with the vibrato, portamento, and usual techniques common to the instrument in contemporary concertos. The accompanying strings however, are asked to refrain from using vibrato in sustained passages, creating a kind of sine tone effect. Various styles are incorporated in the solo part, from bluegrass fiddling to more angular contemporary passages. Other aspects of the orchestration hearken to pop music terrain: near the end of the first movement, for instance, a climax approaches house music in its boisterous brass and percussion.
On March 13th, joined by Jansen, the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, delivered an energetic and assured performance of the concerto at Carnegie Hall. The violinist played with the supreme confidence of a soloist who has endeavored to make a work entirely her own. With its variety of solo demeanors, both shaded and nuanced and explosive and mercurial, Van Der Aa’s Violin Concerto seems the ideal vehicle for Jansen’s multi-faceted artistry. The Philadelphians matched her playing with equal confidence, with strings sensitively taking up the “sine tone” accompaniment of the sostenuto passages and winds, brass, and percussion gamely taking on roles in the electronica mimicry of wide swaths of the piece. Interpretively speaking, Jansen and Nézet-Séguin were on the same page throughout. In a dramatic conclusion to the piece, the violinist played her last gesture nose to nose with the conductor, eliciting surprised exhalation and then sustained applause from the audience.
Sergei Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony is one of my favorite of the composer’s works and I have seen a number of performances of it in concert. While I might quibble here or there with Nézet-Séguin’s tempo choices, the conductor’s tendency to press ahead during the potentially “schmaltzy” moments of the piece rendered it free of several layers of sentimental “varnish:” still emotive yet utterly fresh-sounding. The Philadelphia Orchestra’s strings are justly renowned and were exemplary here, but the winds, brass, and percussion each contributed in both spotlight and ensemble moments as well. Thus, it was a touching exchange onstage when the conductor insisted on walking out to each of them in turn, bestowing embraces and well-earned praise.
Jansen and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, have recorded Van Der Aa’s Violin Concerto for Disquiet Media. It is paired with the aforementioned Hysteresis, performed by Amsterdam Sinfonietta, directed by Candida Thompson, with Kari Krikku as soloist. The performances are detailed and evocative, giving an excellent sense of the composer’s approach to ensemble works. One hopes that both the recent high-profile performances of the Violin Concerto and this persuasive recording prove inviting to other soloists and ensembles: Van der Aa’s work is worthy of wider currency.
Performances at Zankel Hall on March 6 at 7 PM (note the early start time) will feature two of contemporary classical music’s estimable chamber ensembles. JACK Quartet and SO Percussion team up in a program that includes a string quartet premiere by Philip Glass, a pitched percussion work by Donnacha Dennehy, and a piece for the combined forces and prepared disklaviers by Dan Trueman. (Tickets here).
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Open Source Music Festival 2017
Recently Open Source Music Festival was kind enough to send us some videos of JACK and pianist Joel Fan performing as part of the 2017 Festival. We’re still decoding the JACK offerings and will post them another day. But below, Fan plays two pieces by Augusta Thomas and Bernard Rands. Collectively titled ‘Two Thoughts about the Piano,’ they demonstrate the pianist’s virtuosity, with trills, repeated notes and angular gestures abounding to explore the entire compass of the instrument. Follow the YouTube link to hear the rest of the performances.
Works by Gosfield, Moravec, Machover, Lansky, and Ben-Amots
NEW YORK – Since 2013, pianists Susan Grace and Steven Beck have been performing together as the duo Quattro Mani. Their recent recital at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall presented several New York premieres, including pieces by Annie Gosfield, Paul Moravec, Tod Machover, and Paul Lansky. Gosfield’s mix of dissonance with rollicking rhythms was winning in “Refracted Rhythms and Telepathic Static.” Lansky’s three Color Codas – “In the Red,” Purple Passion,” and “Out of the Blue” – indeed embodied multihued harmonies and sparking ostinatos. Moravec writes in an elegant, idiomatic style for the piano. His Quattro Mani contains a substantial amount of memorable material — dare one hope it is a sketch for a double concerto? The evening culminated in a scintillating performance of John Adams’ Hallelujah Junction, which was both fiery and superbly coordinated.
Quattro Mani’s latest CD recording for Bridge Records, Re-Structures, is an engaging outing. The title work, also heard at Weill Hall, is by Machover. Scored for piano and electronics, it juxtaposes frenetic acoustic virtuosity with correspondingly penetrating digital commentary. Lansky’s Out of the Blue, one of the Color Codas also on the New York program, is an attractive post-minimal exploration of small cells of material that gradually expand into boisterous passages in octaves and quick scalar runs.
The multi-movement work Cembal d’Amore, Book Two by Poul Ruders changes up the duo’s instrumentation: Beck plays harpsichord while Grace remains at the piano. Its corruscating textures, varying duplications and canons in a sequence of movements based in part on Baroque dance suites, revels in chromaticism and wry wit in equal measure. Yet another shift in approach is found in Életút Lebenslauf by György Kurtág. Basset horns, played by Andy Stevens and Sergei Vassiliev, accompany the pianists playing instruments tuned in microtones. Mysterious timbres bump elbows with thornily dissonant angularity in a piquant, unforgettable piece.
The CD’s closer is a bit more straightforward, but no less captivating. Tango for the Road by Ofer Ben-Amots is an eight-minute long exploration of traditional tango rhythms and gestures, with a few surprises and a left turn or two along the way. The piece gives Grace and Beck an ideal vehicle to showcase the supple phrasing and suavity they bring to bear whenever given a chance to swing.
Re-Structures is an adventurous exploration of many facets of 21st century piano music: highly recommended.
