Contemporary Classics July 17, 2018 Celebrating the Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival

Tonight is the first of two shows featuring music from the Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival which runs from July 26 to July 30^th with a series of 5 concerts overseen by Thomas Adès, the Boston Symphony Orchestra's 2018 Artistic Partner.  Lets start with a work from the first concert Per Nørgård's Voyage into the Golden Screen composed in 1969.

 

Per Nørgård's Voyage into the Golden Screen (1969)

Per Nørgård has stated: "I stand with one foot in Western rationalism and one in Eastern mysticism, but even so I feel a stranger to both. I am, so to speak, some third point." Voyage into the Golden Screen plays with these polarities. In simple terms, it has an "Eastern" first movement and a "Western" second movement. Predictably, Nørgård's gift lies in his effort to find a "third point," to not only reconcile the opposites together, but in so doing, to reveal the unity between them. The first movement presents two chords, each an echo of the other and both built on the natural overtone series, a series of pitches that eventually build the triad. In fact, the two chords are almost identical, save for Nørgård's "retuning" of the second, up a quarter-tone from the original G natural, which explains the actual sounding-out of reflection.

The shorter second movement uses Nørgård's now famous "infinity series” which is mathematical construct where melody, harmony and or rhythm repeats in exponential series.  For example while the flutes play the fastest version of the series, the strings play the same series at 1/32nd the speed. What results is a paradoxical unfolding of time as a circle and as a reflection of itself.  

Francisco Coll’s Four Iberian Miniatures

Next we have Francisco Coll’s Four Iberian Miniatures written in 2014 for Violin and orchestra. This work was commissioned by Britten Sinfonia and Saffron Hall and premiered there on February 11, 2014 by Pekka Kuusisto with the Britten Sinfonia, conducted by Thomas Adès, who was Coll’s mentor. This dazzling piece features the violinist flamboyantly dancing through lucid textures which filter flamenco through Coll's own fractured and surreal musical voice.  It combines lyrical passages with spasmodic bursts of passion which both celebrates and parodies classic Spanish-Latin American dances.

 

Rebecca Saunders’ Fletch

Rebecca Saunders’ Fletch, which is from the second concert of the Tanglewood contemporary music festival.  It received it’s world premiere on May10, 2012 in Graz Germany by the Arditti Quartet.  It gets its name from the fletch which is the feather placed on the arrow, the arrow with the capacity of flight; the feathered vane towards the back of the arrow, used to stabilize during flight.  In the words of Rebecca Saunders  "Fletch is a furious ongoing exploration of a specific physical gesture and fragment of sound." In it's purest form, this elemental sonic gesture is a flowing up-bow sul pont double-harmonic trill, often with a near glissando, crescendo-ing out of nothing to fortissimo.

This fragment of sound is arresting, immediate and present, but thus inherently unstable and unpredictable. The bow reveals again and again the almost quasi-mechanical manic trilling sound, which lies hidden beneath the surface of silence. Surface, weight and feel are part of the reality of musical performance: the weight of the bow on the string; The differentiation of touch of the left-hand finger on the string ... Feeling the weight of sound is therefore an integral part of the composing process. This is a fragment of sound. The essential material of sound is focused on the sound of an instrument, tracing the essence of fragments of color within a confined and reduced range of timbres, and exploring the physical gesture. "

 

Conlon Nancarrow   Studies for Player Piano     Studies No. 2, 3c, 5, 6, 7, 9         

The Studies for Player Piano is a series of 49 études for player piano by Mexican composer Conlon Nancarrow.  The first 10 of these were written between 1928 and 1960.  These are some of the best-known and celebrated compositions by Nancarrow, even though they are generally not considered a set of compositions, but rather individual compositions that were given the same title and status.  Most of these studies have been arranged for many different ensembles and at the Tanglewood Festival will be heard in a form for chamber orchestra or for two pianos.  We close this hour with the 2^nd Study in the original form for piano from the album Conlon Nancarrow  Studies for Piano Player

Wecome back to the second hour of Contemporary Classics.  I am your host Dave Lake.   We will begin this second hour of our celebration of the Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival by continuing the  exploration of the Studies for Player Piano by Mexican composer Conlon Nancarrow.  Etudes 3c, 5 and 9 will be performed in a chamber orchestra arrangement in the first concert on July 26 and Etudes 6 & 7 will be performed in an arrangement for two pianos during the second concert on July 27.

 

Chen Yi: As in a Dream    

Chen Yi: As in a Dream  was composed between 1988 and 1994 for Soprano voice, Violin, Cello with the text from Poems by Li Qing-zhao.  There are two songs  I remember many times...&  Last night fine rain...

The reciting speech and lingering charm of the Chinese traditional opera are absorbed as nourishment so as to transmit the sentimental feelings of remembering the happy past times and treasuring flowers and spring scenery, leaving a lasting impression after the ending of the pieces. 

      

Andrew Norman: Light Screens   

The initial inspiration for this piece came from Frank Lloyd Wright’s stained glass window designs, which he termed “light screens.” These designs use simple shapes like the square and the rhombus in repetitive patterns, and they often feature a lively dynamic of asymmetry between areas of intense geometric activity and expanses of largely empty space.

     

Sean Shepherd: Quartet for Oboe and Strings            

In one movement. Dedicated to Liang Wang. Commissioned by the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival and La Jolla Music Society. Premiered at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, August 2011. Scored for oboe with violin, viola and cello

       

Gerald Berry: Sextet    

Irish Composer Gerald Barry composed his Sextet for Ensemble in 1993. The group Array Music of Toronto commissioned the Sextet. It is a piece in which the moments of change between sections are as important as the musical content - rather like those points in paintings where objects or areas of color meet. Like other works by Barry it is complex, with fresh material appearing at the end, opening up new territory as the music concludes. The composer has said that much of it reminds him of seaside resorts from childhood.