Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Piano

A Happy (belated) Birthday to Morton Feldman

Morton FeldmanMorton Feldman
An 80th Birthday Celebration
Merkin Concert Hall
Saturday, October 28, 2006

I am perpetually late with birthday greetings. This past Saturday, as my wife and I entered the city for the Morton Feldman concert, I called my grandmother to wish her a happy birthday two days late. I felt a little better about myself when my wife pointed out that Morton Feldman’s 80th birthday celebration was being held a full nine and a half months after his 80th birthday.

I am just glad that the concert came together, though. The number of people who attended is a testament to Feldman’s influence over the years. La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela were unmistakably present – you can’t miss Young in his sleeveless biker jacket. Another composer known for longer than normal tones, Phill Niblock, was also in attendance. And Bunita Marcus, of course, who helped pull the whole thing together.

We arrived very close to show time. The doors were closed behind us, and we were told there would be no leaving the room except during intermission, due to the fact that the performance was being recorded. We took our seats, the lights dimmed, and Aki Takahashi walked on stage to loud applause.

Takahashi bowed, then sat at the piano. The applause quickly fell to silence, and Takahashi sat silent for a moment in preparation. The first piece was “Piano”, written in 1977. I am relatively familiar with the piece from recordings, but a couple of differences in the live performance struck me right away. First, it was apparent that I listen to Feldman’s music way too loud. I guess I knew this on some level, but during the performance it took a while for me to become accustomed to the low dynamics. While “Piano” has more dynamic range than many other Feldman pieces, the extreme quiet of the soft sections made the other noises around me – the coughing and even the breathing of the rest of the audience – much more pronounced. But that is part of the point, isn’t it?

The second thing that struck me in live performance was my anticipation of upcoming notes. In a recording of Feldman’s music, I never really make an attempt to anticipate the notes coming up. This is really great in the longer pieces, because of how Feldman plays with memory – my memory anticipates one thing based on something I heard ten minutes ago, but something else comes up to my surprise, even after I think I know the piece completely. In the live performance, though, I couldn’t help but watch Takahashi’s hands and anticipate the next notes to be played.

I overcame this with the second and last piece of the evening, “For Bunita Marcus,” by closing my eyes. I only thought to do this after I saw Bunita Marcus doing the same thing. I highly recommend this when listening to Feldman compositions live.

According to the program note by Marcus, one of the intentions of including these two particular pieces was to showcase the range of Feldman’s composition for piano. Where “Piano” deals with extremes – in register (or pitch) and in dynamics (or volume) – “For Bunita Marcus” stays in the middle and high registers, and relatively soft. The notes follow each other slowly, and hang in the air. Feldman’s interest in the decay of the sound itself is very apparent in this piece, whereas in “Piano”, there were more sudden stops, quick turns, a feeling of angularity. In “For Bunita Marcus”, the sounds floated about, slowly interacting. I could see why composers such as Young and Niblock, so intensely devoted to long tones and the interactions of sounds themselves, would be moved by this piece.

“For Bunita Marcus” ended to thunderous applause and a standing ovation. It seemed a little odd to have such a delicate, quiet piece end with such loud noise. I wonder what La Monte Young thought of this – at his performances, applause is strictly forbidden. I used to think this was an eccentric quirk, but now I think I get it.

After the applause died down, Bunita Marcus announced the reception on the upper floor. Unfortunately, I was not able to go to the reception after the show. If anyone was able to go, please comment below – I would love to hear what happened.

Both “Piano” and “For Bunita Marcus” were flawlessly performed, as one would expect from Takahashi, who has been playing Feldman’s music for over a quarter century. While I enjoyed the extremes of “Piano”, I loved the performance of “For Bunita Marcus”. In La Monte Young’s words–overheard as he addressed Bunita Marcus after the show, “That was a beautiful piece you inspired.”

by Nathan Bibb
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
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Piano, Uncategorized

Keys to the Future–Notes from the Artistic Director

Keys to the Future is an annual festival of contemporary music for solo piano here in New York City.  This year’s event will take place November 7-9 (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) at Greenwich House’s Renee Weiler Concert Hall. If you’re interested in checking out pertinent information, the website is http://www.keystothefuture.org/ or you can contact me directly at joe@keystothefuture.org.

The six pianists participating this year are: Lisa Moore, Blair McMillen, Tatjana Rankovich, Lora Tchekoratova, Polly Ferman, and myself. I thought I’d talk briefly here about the Festival and then focus on one piece from each of the three programs.

My goal as Artistic Director of Keys is to get listeners up to speed on what’s been happening in recent years with solo piano music. This season, the Festival has opened up a bit to include a handful of pieces from the 1970s and 80s. Keys to the Future has embraced the stylistic diversity of the contemporary scene, and you will hear pieces on the same evening of a type that are rarely if ever performed on the same program (for example, a short work by Berio followed by an arrangement of a Radiohead tune on 11/8).

Here’s a look at three of the pieces:

On the first night (Tuesday, 11/7), the brilliant pianist Lisa Moore will perform Henri Dutilleux’s Le Jeu des Contraires (Prelude No. 3) (1989). Here are some notes on the work by Etienne Moreau:

“The piano has been—and continues to be, at age 90—a source of inspiration to Dutilleux, his piano works providing a significant key to the evolution of his aesthetic beliefs. The possibilities in terms of sound offered by its harmonic richness and the diversity of its timbres attract Dutilleux to the instrument.

In Le Jeu the composer has concentrated all his harmonic, rhythmic and acoustic ability, displaying a remarkable mastery of ‘mirror’ writing. This piece seems to represent the very culmination of the musical and sound world of Henri Dutilleux, exemplifying the merging of intelligence and instinct inherent in all his compositions.”

On the second evening (Wednesday, 11/8), I will perform Arvo Pärt’s “Für Alina.”

Pärt composed “Für Alina” in 1976, and this little piece announced – quietly, thoughtfully – the arrival of his “tintinnabuli style.” The music is reminiscent of ringing bells, hence the name. Tintinnabuli works are rhythmically simple, and do not change tempo. It was written originally as a gift for an Estonian girl on her own in London.

On the third evening (Thursday, 11/9), virtuoso Tatjana Rankovich will play Bruce Stark’s “Winged.” Here are some comments on the work by the composer:

“The notion of angels has been a source of musical inspiration to me for years. Often the mere thought of other-worldly, high-energy beings in unseen dimensions brings forth a rush of ideas, as though they were eager to share their cosmic music if only I would turn them a listening ear. Winged is in one movement containing essentially two parts. The first and largest part represents a visitation by angels from invisible worlds, depicted in materials ranging from swirling figures to gentle melodic passages to ecstatic outpourings. After their disappearance, the last part (introduced by a low drone in the bass) represents a reminiscence from the human perspective on having witnessed these wondrous creatures. Here I quote the famous Christmas song Angels We Have Heard On High in fragments, with a slight reference to its “Gloria” section as the work closes.”

I hope you come to one or more of the evenings. It should be fun. Please take a look on Sequenza21.com next Friday for my third and final post.

 

by Joseph Rubenstein
Click Picks, Contemporary Classical

Steve’s click picks #4

Our weekly listen and look at composers and performers that you may not know yet, but should… And can, right here and now, since they’re nice enough to offer a good chunk of listening online:

Johnny Chang (US / L.A.)

Violinist/composer/provocateur and eternally-hopeful Dodgers fanatic, Chang brings his amazing awareness and technique to everything from the toughest scores to the freest sonic explorations. Some of this exploration goes far enough to make you wonder “where’s the violin?”; but once you realize the point isn’t so much listening to the violin as it is to the violinist, you’ll be fine. This is ably documeted at his site, where under the “music” button you’ll find recordings of pieces by Cage, Brown, Pisaro, Saunders, Carter, Crane and Overton. Chang’s own inward-looking and intensely focused compositions can be heard on the same page. As a bonus, links on the main page will let you hear his collaboration with wonderful cellist Jessica Catron, called the Microscore Project. It’s whole slew of specifically-commissioned pieces, all running 30 seconds or less.

Alejandro Viñao (b. 1951)

Born and raised in Argentina, but long a British resident and citzen, Viñao’s work has been heard regularly across Europe and Asia, but fairly rarely here in the U.S. His own description of his music: “…characterised by the use of pulsed rhythmic structures to create large scale form, and by a melodic writing which — as in the case of much non-European music — develops through rhythm rather than harmony.” I’d call it “tough-lush”, a lot of color and propulsion, but also real “lines”. (A fun surprise is when exotic instruments show up in the thorny textures, no apologies offered!) The link “audio excerpts” will take you to good-sized excerpts of his work; don’t forget to follow the special link from that page, that takes you to an extensive taste of his opera “Rashomon”.

Laetitia Sonami (b. 1957 — France / US)

Cribbing her own bio for the basics: Laetitia Sonami was born in France and settled in the United States in 1975 to pursue her interest in the emerging field of electronic music. Her work combines text, music and “found sound” from the world, in compositions which have been descibed as “performance novels”. She is creating and utilizing some of the most sophisticated technologies in order to create an intimate, spontaneous art form which transcends technology…. If you have trouble picturing this, all I can do is tell you to listen. While Sonami’s site (linked above) has short audio clips to hear, where I really want to send you is to a complete recording of her work “She Came Back, Again“, courtesty of the Other Minds Archive at Archive.org (coincidentally, Other Minds just happened to announce their 12th festival program this week). This is a live performance from the Other Minds Festival #4, November 10th, 1997. Slightly surreal, austere, almost autistic yet strangely sensual, the piece is a waking dream, maybe a fairy tale, but I think just as much the musical equivalent of a David Lynch film.

by Steve Layton
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