Contemporary Classics May 22, 2018 Music from SpoletoUSA's Chamber Music Series and Conversation with Doug Balliett

Again our opening theme music was by Kirsten Volness from her work Nocturne. 

Tonight on Contemporary classics we are celebrating contemporary classical music being performed at SpoletoUSA festival in Charleston SC beginning this Friday.  As part of tonight’s program we will have an interview with Doug Balliett who is the composer in residence at the Chamber Music Series at SpoletoUSA

Alban Berg: Vier Stücke Für Klarinette Und Klavier, Op. 5

The Four Pieces are very brief and complex; Berg abandons motivic connections in favor of deep structural relationships beneath a perpetually moving surface. As with most of Berg’s early works, there is a preponderance of quartal and whole-tone harmonies;.  Adhering to twelve-tone atonal motif,  these miniatures are decidedly more Romantic in gesture, texture, and timbre than Webern or Schoenberg.  The  Four Pieces undergo constant changes in tempi, dynamics, and articulation according to Berg’s intricate instructions (which sometimes change from beat to beat). The first and last of the Four Pieces are the longest, flanking a slow second piece and a scherzo. The Four Pieces also specify that enough time be taken between each little piece to distinguish one movement from the next

Written in 2013,  Four Pieces were not performed until 1919, when they received their premier at a meeting of Schoenberg’s Society for Private Musical Performances in Vienna. 

 

Pauline Oliveros:  Horse Sings from Cloud                

Pauline Oliveros has been a pioneer of music that works at the confluence of tone, breath and the expansion of perceptions – an organic tone scientist breathing spirit music with the sometimes unwieldy lungs of the accordion. “Horse Sings From Cloud” is based on a dream Oliveros had, and offers interactive billows of sustained accordion and vocal drones, broken only by the need for breath – in the lungs of singer and accordion both. The piece is hypnotic and stately, with the vibrations of reeds and larynx combining to create the sense of a calming and centering ancient ritual.

Olivier Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time, III. "Abyss of birds

The story behind the “Quartet for the End of Time” is well known.  Composed in 1940-41 while Messiaen was in a Nazi stalag for piano, violin, cello and clarinet because those were the musicians and instruments available.   III. "Abyss of birds", for solo clarinet.   The abyss is Time with its sadness, its weariness. The birds are the opposite to Time; they are our desire for light, for stars, for rainbows, and for jubilant songs.   A test for even the most accomplished clarinetist, with an extremely slow tempo marking eighth note = 44.

 

Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 7 in B♭ major, Op. 83 III. Precipitato

Piano Sonata No. 7 occasionally called the "Stalingrad" is the second of the three "War Sonatas". The sonata was first performed on 18 January 1943 in Moscow by Sviatoslav Richter.  The third movement Precipitato once described as "an explosive burst of rock 'n' roll with a chromatic edge", is a toccata in form which boldly affirms the key of the sonata through a more diatonic harmonic language than found in the first movement. This is obvious from the very beginning, with simple B♭ major triads repeated over and over again. Despite a wide range of performance tempos chosen by different pianists, the effect is nevertheless imposing and exciting. The toccata culminates into a furious recapitulation of the main theme, taxing all ten fingers to the utmost, until the piece finally ends triumphantly in a thundering cascade of octaves. The precipitato of this sonata is regarded as technically highly demanding.

       

Bela Bartók: Out of Doors

Out of Doors is a set of five piano solo pieces, which is among the very few instrumental compositions by Bartók with programmatic titles. The first movement “With Drums and Pipes" is the only piece in this set which can be traced to a specific folk song, Gólya, gólya, gilice.  The second movement "Barcarolla" is a song-like andante.  The third movement “Musettes" consists mostly of imitating the sound effects of a poorly tuned pair of musettes, a type of small bagpipe.   The fourth movement "The Night's Music" is a loose rondo, with the middle as 'developmental' section.   This was one of Bartok’s most popular works during his lifetime.  The fifth movement "The Chase" consists of five melodic episodes which are prefaced and separated by 'ritornello' type sections of repeated cluster chords in a clashing rhythm.