Work of the week

An educational project, the "Gershwin Experiment", run by German local broadcasting companies has enabled school pupils to learn about the music of composer György Ligeti. In the project's final concerts on 12 and 13 November at Munich's Herkulessaal, students can hear the fourth movement of Ligeti's Concert Românesc, performed by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mariss Jansons. The performance will also be broadcast live on German television and radio.

Although Concert Românesc was written in 1951, it was twenty years before it received its first public performance: a harmonically atypical passage caused an argument during an early Budapest rehearsal leading to the censorship of the work. Today, however, the piece can be heard in concert halls all over the world. Written for orchestra with string and woodwind solos, the four-movement work uses elements from the Romanian folk tradition. Ligeti thus follows in the footsteps of Béla Bartók, taking particular inspiration from his studies at the Institute of Folklore, Bucharest.

I grew up in the Hungarian-language area in Transylvania. The official language was Romanian, but I only learned this language later at secondary school. This is why the Romanian language seemed mysterious to me when I was a child. Already as a three-year-old I had my first encounters with the Romanian folklore: The alpine horn had a completely different sound than "normal" music. Today I know why: because the alpine horn only produces natural tones, the fifth and seventh partials - the major third and the minor seventh - sound "wrong", flatter than for instance on the piano. This wrong sound - which is actually the right one, as it corresponds to acoustic purity - is what is so wonderful about the sound of the horn. - György Ligeti

Further performances of Concert Românesc this month include those by the Royal Concertgebouw and Gustavo Gimeno during their tour to Japan and Taiwan this November: on the 9th at the Aichi Prefectural Art Theatre, Nagoya, and on the 13th at Tokyo's Suntory Hall. The MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra will also include the piece in a concert series exclusively for schools this month: on 6 November at the Lucas Cranach Gymnasium in Wittenberg, on 9 November at the Domgymnasium in Merseburg and on 26 November at the Kulturhaus, Reinsdorf.

• Concert Românesc - information


• György Ligeti - profile

photo: © Wikimedia Commons / Stbichler (Alt, Porumbacu de Jos)

 

On November 2015, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra will present the world premiere of Toshio Hosokawa's Nach dem Sturm ("After the Tempest"), coinciding with both the orchestra’s 50th anniversary and the composer’s 60th birthday. Kazushi Ono will conduct at Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, with Susanne Elmark and Ilse Eerens singing the two soprano roles.

Hosokawa’s earlier Neben dem Fluss ("Next to the River") for harp and his trumpet concerto Im Nebel ("In the Mist") took their inspiration from poems by Hermann Hesse, but Nach dem Sturm is the first work in which the composer has set Hesse’s words directly to music. The text in question is "Blumen nach einem Unwetter" ("Flowers after a Storm"), for which Hesse painted an accompanying watercolour. Hosokawa uses the poem for the second part of the 20-minute work; this is preceded by a violent storm, using the full force of a large orchestra and an extensive battery of Japanese percussion. Nach dem Sturm is one of several of works that Hosokawa has written in response to the devastating Tohoku Earthquake of 2011. He explains:

For me, musical expression used to be a method to find harmony between human and nature; however, since the Tohoku earthquake in 2011, I began to reconsider the role of music. Music is a type of Shamanism; people pray by music, and calm the spirit of the deceased, creating a bridge between this world and afterlife. The two sopranos represent Mikos [shrine maidens] in this piece. The first half of the music is an expression of a storm using only the orchestra. In the second half, the two sopranos sing Hermann Hesse’s poem, a depiction of a flower gradually finding light again in the aftermath of a storm. - Toshio Hosokawa

Later this month, the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra will tour Europe, bringing Nach dem Sturm to Luxembourg on 17 November and Berlin on 19 November.

• Toshio Hosokawa - profile


• Nach dem Sturm - information


• Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra

 

The soloist holds his instrument to his ear, plucks with his left hand and grimaces. He has had to detune his viola… On 28 October 2015, Jörg Widmann’s Viola Concerto will be premiered at the Philharmonie de Paris. The piece was written for Antoine Tamestit, a frequent collaborator of Widmann's, who will perform the piece with the Orchestre de Paris conducted by Paavo Järvi.

Tamestit asserts that the audience can expect ‘a unique concerto experience’ with Widmann's Viola Concerto, where the tradition of the solo concerto genre is tested with characteristic refinement. The work begins without a cue from the conductor — the soloist just starts playing, and without the bow. Inventive playing techniques demonstrate the instrument’s versatility: the imitation of a sitar using a ‘trembling’ vibrato, or percussive use of the viola’s body whilst playing with the other hand. Throughout the piece, the soloist must behave like an actor following detailed stage directions, with a mixture of pride and self-irony. Widmann’s inventiveness is not limited to the solo part; for instance, a scotch glass is used to prepare the piano.

To me, the viola has always been first and foremost an extraordinarily melodious instrument. Playing chamber music with viola is one of the best experiences for me as a musician. Even with the viola’s C-string alone, you can tell stories unimaginable on any other string instrument. In my Viola Concerto, the setting is transported for long periods to a utopian land: at the beginning to a foreign and tentative sphere, inhabited only by viola pizzicati of all possible and impossible variants; then a wistful song from an imaginary oriental fairytale world; finally a crash into artistic-absurd cascades of virtuosity introducing the heart of the piece, an aria for viola and extremely muted strings; a painfully intimate swan song in a submerged world that will only be pulled into a dazzling reality in the final bars. – Jörg Widmann

Widmann’s concerto is a co-commission from the Orchestre de Paris, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Subsequent performances will take place on 26 and 27 November 2015 at the Berwaldhallen, Stockholm, and on 3 and 4 March 2016 at the Herkulessaal, Munich.

• Jörg Widmann - composer profile


• Viola Concerto: details and online score


• Discover more on the website of the Orchestre de Paris

A new staging of Hans Werner Henze’s music drama The Bassarids opens in its original English language version on 23 October. Rossen Gergov will conduct the production, directed by Frank Hilbrich, at Mannheim National Theatre. The world premiere took place at the Salzburg Festival in 1966, and half a century on, The Bassarids remains one of the most significant of Henze’s almost 50 stage works.

The libretto for The Bassarids, written by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, is based on Euripides’ Bacchae; it tells the story of Pentheus, the new ruler of Thebes, banning the cult of Dionysus before being unwittingly drawn into the revelry by Dionysus himself, disguised as a stranger. Pentheus is eventually killed by his own mother, who has mistaken him for a wild animal, before Dionysus reveals his true identity and demands adoration from the Thebans for his revenge against the tyrant. The one-act opera’s large instrumentation and sophisticated libretto make The Bassarids an ambitious project. With Dionysus and Pentheus embodying two extremes of human existence, there is great potential for reference to the present day.

Today I consider The Bassarids, which I now understand to a far greater degree and hold much dearer than when I was composing the work, to be my most important music theatre work. It is […] still relevant for us, but specifically addresses questions associated with the years around 1968: what is freedom and what is bondage? What is repression, what is revolt and what is revolution? This is all in fact demonstrated, insinuated and suggested by Euripides. The multiplicity and richness of relationships, the tangible sensual relationships between the ancient civilisation of this Archaic period and our time are captured in Auden’s text; Euripides is transposed into our time in a manner which could not have been better achieved with the best possible stage production of the original Greek play, as we are constantly reminded of our distance from a different, long-gone civilisation. – Hans Werner Henze

The production runs until 10 December with four subsequent performances. In November, a production by Mario Martone will open at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome.

• Hans Werner Henze - profile


• The Bassarids - information


• Nationaltheater Mannheim

Photo: © Het Muziektheater Amsterdam / photo ed

The Meiningen Court Orchestra (Meininger Hofkapelle) celebrates its 325th anniversary this year. It was with this orchestra in central Germany that Richard Strauss got his first job as a conductor at the age of 19. As a part of the anniversary celebrations, Strauss' last opera Capriccio will open on 16 October in a new production by Anthony Pilavachi, conducted by Philippe Bach.

Many composers have written operas with music itself as a central theme: The Magic Flute, The Mastersingers of Nuremburg, Il trovatore (The Troubadour), and countless operas about Orpheus... In Capriccio, Strauss too puts ‘music’ into the music. Already in the overture, a string sextet performs a birthday piece (which later became one of Strauss’ most popular chamber pieces) for the Countess Madeleine. Set around 1775 in a castle near Paris, the opera tells of the dispute between the supporters of composers Christoph Willibald Gluck and Niccolò Piccini about stylistic changes in opera traditions at the time. Parallel to this conflict on aesthetics is a battle to win the favour of the Countess, with much petty jealousy and many an affair!

Work on Capriccio began in 1939, a time of war. The world was changing its face forever, with Strauss himself becoming embroiled in the National Socialist system; he restricted the opera to one act to save time. With this in mind, some scenes in Capriccio can be seen as a masked confession of the composer’s guilt, as in this dialogue between the Countess and Count from the second tableau:

Countess: Rameau is a genius..., but mannerless and crude is his nature. When I think of this, I thoroughly dislike him.  It dulls my pleasure.
Count: You must separate the man from his work.

The complex network of tensions within the opera and surrounding its creation and reception presents a particular challenge to any director. The much anticipated production at Theater Meiningen, the first new production in six years, runs until 27 June 2016 with ten performances.

• Richard Strauss - profile


• Capriccio - information


• Südthüringisches Staatstheater Meiningen

Photo: © Das Meininger Theater / foto ed

• Richard Ayres - profile


• No. 48 (night studio) - information


• BBC Symphony Orchestra

(10/05/15)

On 3 October 2015, Gerald Barry’s The One-Armed Pianist (2015) will receive its world premiere at London’s Science Museum. Nicholas Collon will conduct the Aurora Orchestra in a walk-through concert, the culmination of NMC’s Objects at an Exhibition project, held in association with the Science Museum for the label’s 25th anniversary year. The accompanying CD was released on 18 September.

The six works in Objects at an Exhibition are all inspired by artefacts or spaces within the museum. Barry’s The One-Armed Pianist was written in response to an artificial right arm, whose middle three fingers are disproportionately small, with the rigid thumb and little finger outstretched so as to cover an octave on the piano. It was made for a woman who used it to perform at the Royal Albert Hall in 1906. The piece, which does not involve a piano in its instrumentation, is hauntingly sparing in its use of material. Barry’s imaginative approach to the orchestration of a single repeated two-chord figure draws the listener in and compels them to examine each sound intently. This forms the work’s first half, which Barry calls ‘the everyday’; the second half is the octave played by the wooden arm. A friend of Barry said on hearing the piece:

It's hearing the Mind of the Composer. The calls at the end are like the Austro-Hungarian empire – traces of glory fading forever.

Following this performance at London’s Science Museum, Barry has two further world premieres this month: Midday (2014) for violin and piano on the 14th at The Forge, Camden with Darragh Morgan and Mary Dullea, and The Destruction of Sodom (2015) for eight horns and two wind machines on the 31st in Granada, Spain. Hugh Tinney will perform Barry’s Piano Concerto with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin on the 30th.

• Gerald Barry - profile


• The One-Armed Pianist - information


• Science Museum London

photo: Science Museum London

(09/28/15)

On 25 September 2015 Pēteris Vasks’ String Quartet No. 4 will be performed at the Kongelige Teater in Copenhagen, as part of the ballet Short Time Together. In one of the evening’s three parts, choreographer Natalia Horecna offers up a deep reflection on the speed of modern life through the medium of contemporary dance.

Vasks’ String Quartet No. 4 was composed in 1999 and premiered by the Kronos Quartet at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris on 21 May 2000. It has five movements, which form a continuous dramatic structure: Elegy, Toccata I, Choral, Toccata II, and Meditation. Slowly beginning with a line of trills, Vasks considers the first movement an 'encounter with the past'; Horecna takes this looking-back as inspiration for her dance. In contrast to the intimate atmosphere of the Elegy, Toccata I is strident with glaring harmonics and rhythmic accentuation, mirroring the aggression of the 20th century, whereas the lyrical Choral at the work’s centre appears to avoid clear expression. The whole piece has a symmetrical structure, with the two Toccata movements referencing each other and the dark mood of the Meditation borrowed from the quartet’s opening Elegy.

Horecna’s choreographed version of the quartet sends the audience on a journey of contrasts, transcending the limits of time and focusing on human existence:

In this ballet I look at the past, at what it has saved for us, and at death as a new beginning from which the best preserved memories flourish and become something new, something that is even better.

Short Time Together runs at the Kongelige Teater until mid-November with 13 performances. On 1 October, Vasks’ concerto for violin and string orchestra, Vox amoris, will be performed in Kiel by Roland Reutter and the NDR Symphony Orchestra, with subsequent performances in Hamburg and Wismar on 2 and 3 October.

• Pēteris Vasks - profile


• String Quartet No. 4 - information


• Det Kongelige Teater Copenhagen

photo: Det Kongelige Teater

(09/21/15)

On 19 September, Flemish Opera will begin its run of Richard Wagner’s ‘Paris version’ of his
Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg at the Opera Gent. Dmitri Jurowski will conduct this production by Catalan director Calixto Bieito, whose staging focuses on the contradiction between natural impulses and social conventions, and explores the place of the artist in society.

Tannhäuser exists in three versions: the original version, premiered in 1845 and revised in 1860, referred to as the ‘Dresden version’; the ‘Paris version’ for the Paris Opéra in 1861, with substantial amendments and a new instrumentation; and an 1875 ‘Vienna version’ with further revisions. Tannhäuser is the only opera for which Wagner himself produced a piano reduction. Despite the opera’s numerous versions, Wagner felt that his work was not yet completed, and wrote to his wife Cosima in January 1883 a few weeks before his death,

"I owe the world a Tannhäuser".

As part of the Richard Wagner Complete Edition, editors Egon Voss, Peter Jost and Reinhard Strohm have dedicated more than 30 years of careful study to producing a comprehensive picture of the genesis of Tannhäuser. Based on this edition, Schott Music has recently published a full score, orchestral parts and vocal scores that allow the comparison of all the opera’s stages, offering a clear overview of the Dresden, Paris and Vienna versions.

Three performances follow the opening night in Ghent until 27 September, after which the production can be seen at the Opera Antwerp from 4 to 17 October. Wagner can also be heard at the Teatro Campoamer in Oviedo, Spain, with Die Walküre on 16 September, and in Bochum, Germany, with Das Rheingold on 18 September. Das Rheingold is also runs in Minden with the Northwest German Philharmonic Orchestra until 22 September.

• Richard Wagner - profile


• Tannhäuser - information


• Opera Gent

photo: Pierpaolo Ferrari

For its season opener, the Swiss Musikkollegium Winterhur has commissioned a new orchestral work from Fazıl Say. Douglas Boyd will conduct the premiere of the new piece, Symphonic Dances, at the Stadthaus Winterhur on 9 September.

Say stands out amongst contemporary composers for his fusion of the Western European and Turkish musical traditions. His Symphonic Dances are strongly influenced by Turkish music, with Say using a typical alternating 8/8–7/8 meter in the first dance. The second movement features Say’s characteristic string glissandi, before a slow third movement and a wild and ecstatic finale. In the spirit of Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Bartók, Say has often incorporated the dance music of his homeland into his chamber music; Symphonic Dances is his first orchestral work to use traditional dance elements so explicitly.

It’s my nature and desire to unite people through music without any borders, not even in the mind. Music is very powerful. Music needs no translation. Everyone understands it, whether Chinese, Turkish or German. A great musician is someone who is able to reach people in a positive or dramatic way. When talking about human nature, music plays an important role. - Fazil Say

The premiere will be followed by a second performance in the same venue on 10 September. Later this month, Say’s double piano concerto Gezi Park 1 will receive its American premiere in Toledo, Ohio on 25 September. On the same day in Mannheim, the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie will give a concert with Say at the piano, featuring his Istanbul Symphony, Water (Su) for piano and orchestra, and Gezi Park 3 for mezzo-soprano, piano and strings, alongside Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G.

 

• Fazil Say - profile


• Symphonic Dances - information

(09/11/15)