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Friedrich Hölderlin’s famous poem Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny) has inspired many composers to create musical settings of the text. Among them is Dieter Schnebel, whose last composition Schicksalslied for speaker, alto voice, chamber choir, chamber ensemble and tape will receive its world premiere on 21 September at the Beethovenfest Bonn. The performance will be given by the Prague Philharmonic Choir and the Symphony Orchestra Flandern conducted by Jan Latham-Koenig, with Franz Mazura and alto Markéta Cukrová as soloists.

Schicksalslied was commissioned by the Beethovenfest Bonn for their 2018 Festival curated around the concept of ‘fate’. In his work Schnebel draws on Hölderlin’s text, as well as referencing Beethoven and the famous fate motif from the Fifth Symphony, to explore the mechanisms of fate in an optimistic and at times playful manner.

Dieter Schnebel – Schicksalslied: Between Hölderlin and Beethoven

Schicksalslied begins with the speaker reciting Beethoven’s own description of his fate motif (‘thus fate knocks at the door’) followed by the beginning of the Fifth Symphony played on tape, over which the choir chants the word “fate” in different languages. Throughout the piece Schnebel employs the human voice in a unique variety of ways from blowing to noisy coughing, and Friedrich Hölderlin’s verses are alternated with quotations from other works by Beethoven such as the Appassionata and String Quartet No.16. In one of his final interviews Schnebel stated:

“Music is a medium, in which feelings play an important role. Music can express delight like no other kind of Art, but also abysmal sorrow. Death is one extreme, overflowing life the other, and in between there are thousands of possibilities.” – Dieter Schnebel

In Frankfurt, Schnebel’s Variationen über das Heidenröslein for voice and ensemble received its world premiere last week on 11 September, and a further version for voice and chamber orchestra will be premiered on 9 November together with Schnebel’s Trauermusik.

• Dieter Schnebel - profile 


• Schicksalslied - work details


• Beethovenfest Bonn

 

On 14 September, Gavin Bryars’ new Lauda 47 (Faciamo laude a tutt’i sancti) for soprano, tenor and medieval ensemble will be premiered in a midnight concert in Sweden’s Uppsala Cathedral, performed by the Serikon ensemble and featuring soprano Anna Maria Friman with tenor John Potter as vocal soloists.

From 2001, Bryars has written a large number of short vocal works known in plural as 'laude', based on a collection of medieval devotional songs from 13th century Italy. Although reinvented for the present day, Bryars’ laude retain the lyrical purity and austerity of the original style. Lasting around 3-5 minutes each, these short songs are regularly published in collected volumes for singers around the world to add to their repertoire.

Gavin Bryars – Lauda 47 (Faciamo laude a tutt’i sancti): Let us sing praise to all the saints

To date, Bryars has written over 40 of his own laude for a variety of instrumentations including solo voice, voices and ensemble, and even full choir. Almost all of them feature a soprano part, which Bryars always writes with the voice of Swedish soprano Anna Maria Friman in mind, and Lauda 47 is no exception. Unusually however, the instrumental ensemble for Lauda 47 is comprised of two tenor recorders, organetta and slide trumpet, which have never been used in his previous laude.

Reflecting a similar fascination with early music forms, Bryars has also written multiple books of Madrigals in addition to laude, the latest being the Sixth Book of Madrigals for six voices which was released in 2015.

“The madrigals from my Sixth Book set texts by Petrarch, a scholar and poet of Renaissance Italy. Petrarchan sonnets have attracted me for several reasons, not least because of their prominence in Italian madrigal music, but also the heart-rending beauty of the poetry and its sheer technical brilliance.” – Gavin Bryars

Two days after the premiere of Lauda 47, another of Bryars' choral works St Brendan arrives at the Promised Land of the Saints will be performed by the Coquetdale Chamber Choir on 16 September in Northumberland, conducted by John Casken.

• Gavin Bryars - profile


• Lauda 47 (Faciamo laude a tutt'i sancti) - work details


• Serikon Ensemble

 

© photo: Gautier Deblonde

On 5 September, Richard Ayres’ new work No. 50 (The Garden) for bass voice and ensemble will receive its world premiere at the opening concert of the Gaudeamus Muziekweek in Utrecht.  Performed by Asko|Schönberg Ensemble, bass Joshua Bloom and conductor Bass Wiegers, the work will be presented with newly commissioned animations by video artist Martha Colburn.

The Garden was commissioned by Asko|Schönberg and London Sinfonietta with initial development funded by The Royal Opera. Inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, Ayres also drew on texts by Edgar Allan Poe, Christina Rossetti, William Shakespeare and Giacomo Leopardi to create a theatrical concert work in a similar vein to his highly popular earlier work No. 42 (In the Alps).

Richard Ayres – No. 50 (The Garden): in search of meaning

 The Garden is a darkly comic, cyclical tale about a discontented man in search of meaning. He digs from his garden down towards the centre of the earth to find the underworld, then all the way back up again to heaven, only to find himself back in his garden once more. Sampled electronics feature heavily throughout the piece, in keeping with Ayres’ current fascination with electronic sounds as heard in recent works such as No. 48 (night studio) (2015) and No. 51 (resting songs) (2017).

“The bass will sing the voices of all the characters during the performance, as though singing to himself. This confuses the certainty of reality, and creates the impression of listening to the central character's thoughts. Are we as an audience watching reality, or observing a dream and fantasy world? Is the man in fact awake, asleep, or even dead? This I want to keep ambiguous.” - Richard Ayres

Asko|Schönberg give further performances of The Garden on 13 September at Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ and on 10 November in Den Bosch.  London Sinfonietta will give the UK premiere in April 2019. A second new work by Ayres, No.49 for brass quintet and soundtrack, will also receive its world premiere later in the 2018/19 season.

• Richard Ayres - profile 


• No. 50 (The Garden) - work details


• Gaudeamus Muziekweek

 

 

The world premiere of Peter Eötvös’ orchestral work Reading Malevich will take place on 1 September 2018 at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, with Matthias Pintscher conducting the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra. The work was commissioned by Roche Commissions, which is a unique cultural program formed by the healthcare company Roche, the Lucerne Festival and the Lucerne Festival Academy.

The Roche Commissions initiative aims to encourage the composition of musical works that arise from challenging intellectual stimulation, and encourages composers to venture beyond the conventional. For Reading Malevich Eötvös decided to depict Kazimir Malevich’s painting Suprematism No. 56 through music, using the painting as inspiration for the form, density, timbre and structure of his composition.

Peter Eötvös – Reading Malevich: Horizontal & Vertical

Reading Malevich is comprised of two movements titled Horizontal and Vertical, in reference to the angles a spectator would observe in Malevich’s painting. Within these two parts, Eötvös employs specific tone pitches and lengths to correspond with the colours of the painting, and uses the intervals between these pitches to depict the distances between objects in the painting and their proportions. In addition, individual passages within each of the movements refer to prominent visual elements in Malevich’s painting such as ‘The Brown Rectangle’, or ‘The Pale Yellow Shadow Before The Red Rectangle’.

 “With this composition I encountered challenges that I would never have found myself. I was often left searching for a solution, sometimes for weeks. Then, I would realise all over again that the structural planning of this composition was ‘picturesque’ and free.” – Peter Eötvös 

Another of Eötvös’ orchestral works, Per Luciano Berio, will receive its world premiere this week on 29 August 2018 at the Semperoper Dresden, where Peter Eötvös will be Composer in Residence for the new season.

• Peter Eötvös - profile


• Reading Malevich - work details


• Lucerne Festival

 

© photo: Marco Borggreve

 

On 25 August 2018, Fazil Say’s fourth symphony Umut Senfonisi will be premiered by the Dresden Philharmonic and conductor Michael Sanderling at the Kulturpalast Dresden. The orchestra commissioned the work from Say, who will be their Composer-in-Residence for the 2018-19 season.

Say characteristically choses programmatic titles for his symphonies, and as “Umut” is the Turkish word for “hope”, Umut Senfonisi or ‘Hope Symphony’ is no exception. In his previous symphonies - Istanbul, Mesopotamia and Universe – Say musically evokes the moods and images suggested by the title of each work, often employing musical idioms from his homeland of Turkey. While Umut Senfonisi is a more abstract title, the work similarly employs traditionally Turkish elements such as passages with time signatures of 7/8 and 9/8 in the second and third movements.

Fazil Say – Umut Senfonisi: destruction and hope

Following traditional symphonic structure, Umut Senfonisi is composed of four movements: Largo espressivo, Allegro energico, Andante tranquillo – Swinging and Adagio, drammatico – Moderato. Throughout the first three movements Say employs dramatic volleyed interjections from the drums, which break through the music’s texture with a machine-gun effect. Say labels these interjections ‘terrorism’ as they musically portray destruction. This becomes particularly poignant in the third movement, when the ‘machine guns’ abruptly terminate a ‘party’ swing passage. In the final movement the music is no longer disrupted with violent drums, and Say ends the Symphony with a glimmer of hope.

“My music is often based on Turkish rhythms, gestures, or dance. When I’m listening to a Japanese composer, he brings something from Japan to the music, and this idea is important to me. The Russian composers, Rimsky-Korsakov or Rachmaninov, employed folk songs and dances from their homeland, and it has been said that Sibelius used nearly 30 folk songs in his Violin Concerto alone. My only concern is that I don’t want Turkish music to be simply something exotic.” – Fazil Say

Alongside Umut Senfonisi, the Dresden Philharmonic will also perform Beethoven’s Symphony No.2 and Say himself will play Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No.17 “The Tempest”, with a repeat performance on 26 August. In February 2019 Umut Senfonisi will receive its French premiere in Bordeaux, performed by the Orchestre National Bordeaux-Aquitaine who co-commissioned the work.

Update: Due to the funeral of his mother, Ayşe Gürgün Say, Fazil Say was unable to attend the concerts in Dresden.

• Fazil Say - profile


• Umut Senfonisi - work details


• Kulturpalast Dresden

 

© photo: Marco Borggreve

On 15 August, Thomas Larcher’s The Hunting Gun will receive its world premiere at Bregenz Festival in a production directed by the acclaimed Austrian actor and film director Karl Markovics. Michael Boder will conduct Ensemble Modern, Schola Heidelberg vocal ensemble and an exceptional cast including Sarah Aristidou, Giulia Peri, Olivia Vermeulen, Robin Tritschler and André Schuen.

Commissioned by the Bregenz Festival, The Hunting Gun is a captivating adaptation of Yasushi Inoue’s 1949 novella of the same name, with a libretto by Friederike Gösweiner. Over three acts the opera tells the story of a secret love affair through a series of three different letters.

Thomas Larcher - The Hunting Gun: A timeless story

The opera opens with a poem sung by a chorus of voices describing a solitary, lonely hunter. Believing himself to be the figure depicted in the poem, the hunter Josuke Misugi writes to the Poet to explain the cause of his melancholy. Through three letters from three women connected with Misugi - his wife, his niece and his lover – a story of multi-layered deception and secrets gradually unfolds, ending in tragedy.

“When I read the story of The Hunting Gun for the first time, I was immediately captured by its timelessness. The central focuses of the work are the illusions we maintain in almost every relationship, as well as the ultimate, profound loneliness inherent in every human being. The music takes on the role of illustrating the storms raging within the various protagonists, shedding a microscopically fine light on their emotions.” – Thomas Larcher

 Two further performances of The Hunting Gun will take place at Bregenz Festival on 17 & 18 August, and the opera will receive its UK premiere in 2019.

On 6 August, Bregenz Festival also featured the Austrian premiere of Larcher’s first symphony Alle Tage for orchestra and baritone, performed by the Wiener Symphoniker and baritone Benjamin Appl under the baton of Karina Canellakis. In February 2019, Canellakis will conduct the UK premiere of Alle Tage with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Thomas Oliemans as soloist.

• Thomas Larcher - profile


• The Hunting Gun - work details


• Bregenz Festival

 

© illustration: Bregenzer Festspiele GmbH / moodley brand identity

On 8 August 2018, Christian Jost’s song cycle Dichterliebe for tenor and 9 instrumentalists will receive its Danish premiere at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen. Jost himself will conduct the Horenstein Ensemble and tenor Peter Lodahl, with accompanying media scenography by Tabea Rothfuchs.

Dichterliebe was commissioned by the Berlin Konzerthaus and the Copenhagen Opera Festival, and received its world premiere at the Berlin Konzerthaus on 21 October 2017. The work is inspired by Robert Schumann’s well-known Dichterliebe op. 48 based on poems by Heinrich Heine. Jost’s reinterpretation changes and increases the cycle’s instrumentation, as well as doubling its length, effectively integrating Schumann’s romantic art song with his own modern style. The music is further supplemented by video sequences which provide a visual representation of the songs’ themes.

Christian Jost - Dichterliebe: reaching further and deeper

The 16 songs of Schumann’s cycle tell a sorrowful story of lost love. The singer’s expressions shift through pain, indifference, sorrow and joy, perhaps in a dream or perhaps reality. In Heine’s poems, the river Rhine acts as a symbol for this stream of emotions, and Jost’s songs also flow. The tenor seems to surface time and again out of the dense, wave-like instrumental accompaniment of legato ostinato, and the harmonies and melodies of Schumann’s composition are developed by Jost into a tonal stream. For example, the short motifs from Schumann’s piano accompaniment are expanded by Jost throughout the whole cycle with greater depth.

“The idea of reaching further and deeper in terms of harmony and texture runs through the entire song cycle, especially in the connecting passages between songs. While Schumann’s original songs are self-contained, my transitions form a harmonic sea, in which the songs are individual islands woven organically into a larger, newly created composition.” – Christian Jost

A second performance of Dichterliebe will take place on 9 August at the Royal Danish Theatre. The Staatstheater Braunschweig will present a new production of the work in a series of 10 performances next season, and a Polish premiere is planned for 2019.

• Christian Jost - profile


• Dichterliebe - work details


• Copenhagen Opera Festival

 

©photo: Tabea Rothfuchs

On 31 July, Huw Watkin’s new chamber work Four Fables for clarinet and piano trio will receive its world premiere at Three Choirs Festival in Hereford, performed by clarinettist Robert Plane and the Gould Piano Trio.

Four Fables was co-commissioned by the Corbridge Chamber Music Festival in celebration of its 20th anniversary, Swansea International Festival, Three Choirs Festival and Wigmore Hall. Watkins composed the work specifically for Robert Plane, who is principal clarinettist for the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, where Watkins holds the position of Composer-in-Association.

Huw Watkins - Four Fables: Fanciful character

As the name suggests, Four Fables is comprised of four movements, with slower Lento movements encircling a faster Allegro second movement. The unusual instrumental combination of clarinet, violin, cello and piano is one made famous by Olivier Messiaen with his Quartet for the End of Time, yet it was in fact the fanciful character of Robert Schumann’s Märchenerzählungen (fairy tale narrations) for clarinet, viola and piano that most inspired Watkins:

‘When I started composing my new piece, I had Schumann’s Märchenerzählungen (for clarinet, viola and piano) in the back of my mind. Schumann was interested in the “picturesque and the fanciful” but left no link to specific fairy tales. This was a similar starting point for me, when writing these four varied fables.’ -Huw Watkins

 Following the premiere, Robert Plane and the Gould Piano Trio will tour Four Fables throughout the UK, including performances at Corbridge Chamber Music Festival on 5 August, Church Stretton Festival on 6 August and Swansea International Festival on 30 September, with further performances planned for 2019.

• Huw Watkins - profile


• Four Fables - work details


• Three Choirs Festival Hereford

 

©photo: Benjamin Ealovega

 

 

On July 25, the world premiere of Lei Liang's Lakescape VI for woodwind quintet will be performed at the Bennington Chamber Music Conference. The piece was commissioned by the Chamber Music Conference and Composers' Forum of the East.

Liang describes the inspiration behind his series of "Lakescape" works:

“Having been interested in Mahayana Buddhism for a number of years, I went to a Buddhist monastery in upstate New York to study meditation in 1999. One evening, while walking alone by the side of the lake, I caught the sight of a “V” shape floating and extending on the surface of the water. It was a beaver taking a swim under the moon. This image gave me insight into my relationship with silence: underneath the music is a profoundly deep silence upon which I seek to inscribe my signature through sound.  It serves as a point of departure that led to a series of works.”

Lei Liang – Lakescape VI: Images through music

Liang's focus on vividly depicting visual images through music is not new. Last April, his exquisite and profound orchestral work, A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams received its world premiere by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, led by Gil Rose. Inspired by the writings and paintings of Huang Binhong (1865-1955), this piece traces the artist's creation of a magnificent landscape painting. He illuminates the journey:

"A landscape emerges out of darkness, illuminated by an artist’s inner vision; distant contours, shapes, hints of color, and emptiness. As the viewer draws closer and closer to the landscape, lines and human presence begin to emerge, sounds to resonate, until we become one with each of its brush-strokes and ink splashes, with its every breath. The mountains are breathing, singing and roaring. The landscape vibrates, pulsates and dances; it takes flight; it stirs, swells, rises, grinds, surges, stretches and blooms; trembling, jolting, and collapsing, it breaks into fragments. ... Rain – drops and drops of rain – returns, to heal the landscape in ruin. A prayer, a resurrection, the rain brings life back to the landscapes, and it regains its gentle heartbeat. A Thousand Mountains, A Million Streams is a musical landscape that I painted with a sonic brush."- Lei Liang

In addition to the world premiere of Lakescape VI, the Flux Quartet performs the world premiere of vis-à-vis on August 14 at Conrad Prebys Concert Hall in La Jolla, California for the La Jolla Music Society SummerFest. On August 9, the same ensemble will perform Liang’s Serashi Fragments in La Jolla. Liang serves​ as composer-in-residence at the Valencia International Performance Academy & Festival in Spain on July 10-20, the Bennington Chamber Music Conference from July 22-28, and Kneisel Hall Chamber Music School and Festival, taking place July 29-Aug 3.

• Lei Liang - profile


• Lakescape VI - work details


• Bennington Chamber Music Conference

 

©Foto Howard Lipin

 

 

On 17 July in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany, Dieter Schnebel’s theatre work Utopien (2008-2013) will be performed by members of the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart ensemble, including sopranos Sarah Maria Sun and Susanne Leitz-Lorey, mezzo-soprano Truike van der Poel, tenor Martin Nagy, baritone Guillermo Anzorena and bass Andreas Fischer.

As a composer, pedagogue and theorist, Schnebel has contributed to music’s history for decades, such as by developing experimental compositional approaches to vocal writing, liberating the human voice into previously unknown dimensions.  Schnebel also blurred the distinctions between concert music and theatre performance by requiring musicians to move around the theatre space as they play. Utopien was first premiered in May 2014 at the Munich Biennale Festival, and was Schnebel’s last theatre work before his death in May earlier this year. The composer often referred to it himself as his magnum opus.

Dieter Schnebel - Utopien: Physicality in music

Utopien is divided into five movements that each evoke a different utopian state - first faith, followed by doubt, acceptance, hope, and finally love. Four intermediate passages are inserted between these movements, to reflect and comment upon the utopian state explored previously. The protagonists of the work negotiate these stages as a group, but also as individuals.  In addition, the physical requirements of the composition ask the singers to jump, run and crawl. Stylistically the music uses archaic, romantic and avant-garde experimental sounds, and librettist Roland Quitt uses elements from texts by René Descartes, Sebastian Brant and Thomas More.

"For all its humorous lightness, Schnebel's Utopien is almost confessional in character. Much of the music therein is best understood as the life a committed Christian who is at sixty-eight both in the present day, and simultaneously traverses their memories of all the years before.”  – Roland Quitt in the premiere programme, 17 May 2014

Utopien can also be heard on 19 July at the Stuttgarter Hospitalkirche where it will be performed as part of the Stuttgart Summer Festival.

• Dieter Schnebel - profile


• Utopien - work details


• Schwäbisch Gmünd

 

©photo: Adrienne Meister