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22 January marks the 100th birthday of the late French composer Henri Dutilleux. In celebration of this occasion, BBC National Orchestra of Wales perform Sur le même accord, for violin and orchestra with Akiko Suwani under the direction of Thomas Søndergård at St David’s Hall, Cardiff.

A Piece "on the same chord"

Sur le même accord was commissioned for the London Philharmonic Orchestra and premiered at the Royal Festival Hall in London on 28 April 2002. Written for Anne-Sophie Mutter, the piece is built around a six-note chord first presented as a single line, which repeats and builds using double stopping. As the motif expands through the orchestra, it is heard as a chord in various inversions.  Sur le même accord is exceptional in Dutilleux's oevre for this rigid compositional method. He once described his approach to composition like this:

"How does a work originate? – It is a unique mystery." – Henri Dutilleux

BBC National Orchestra of Wales will continue its focus on Dutilleux on 27 January 2016, performing the orchestral song cycle Le temps l’horloge with soprano Elizabeth Atherton.

• Henri Dutilleux - profile


• Sur le même accord - work details and online score


• BBC National Orchestra of Wales

 

On 16 January, a new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlo will open at the Landesbühnen Sachsen in Radebeul, Germany directed by Michael Heinicke with conductor Jan Michael Horstmann. Published as part of Schott’s "Edition Meisterwerke", this newly engraved edition from Hermann features new notation, unified scores, parts and piano reductions, and comprehensive corrections to the existing editions.

The opera Don Carlo shows how love and jealousy can influence politics. Don Carlo falls in love with Elisabeth, the daughter of the French king, Henry II, but in order to secure a peace treaty between France and Spain, Elisabeth must marry the Spanish king, Philip II. Aware of her duty, she goes against her heart and weds the monarch, causing much jealousy and heartache.

Verdi's style of composition in Don Carlo

In Don Carlo, Verdi moved away from the traditional bel canto aria, instead composing dramatic solo scenes such as King Philip’s "ella giammai m’amo" monologue. As well as this, he achieved a more dramatic atmosphere through a greater autonomy in the orchestra.

So now I am a perfect Wagnerian! If the critics had paid just a little more attention, they would have noticed that the same things are already written in the trio of "Ernani", in the sleepwalking scene of "Macbeth" and some other of my earlier works. It’s not a question of whether Don Carlo is composed in a certain style, but rather, whether the music is good or bad. (Letter from Verdi to Léon Escudier, 1 April 1867).

This production of Don Carlo runs until 24 April with performances in Radebeul, Eisleben and Bad Elster.

• Giuseppe Verdi - profile


• Don Carlo - work details and online score


• Landesbühnen Sachsen

Photo: Landesbühnen Sachsen / Hagen König

 

On 26 December 2015, Rodion Shchedrin's new opera A Christmas Tale will be premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, conducted by Valery Gergiev. With its routes in the 19th century, the story is based on Czech author Božena Nemcova's fairy tale The Twelve Months.

For more than two decades Shchedrin was interested in this subject matter. The new two-act opera is in Russian, using a translation by Nikolai Leskow. A Christmas Tale tells the story of a mother who, with the help of her daughter, is trying to get rid of her beautiful and kind-hearted stepdaughter. In deepest winter, they send the obedient child out into the forest to search for violets, knowing there won’t be any. However, on her desperate and futile hunt, the young girl meets the Twelve Months, which come to her aid.

Shchedrin's work is known for its inventive and colourful instrumentation, perhaps due to his experience playing a wide range of orchestral instruments as a student. He explains:

I think for me composition is mostly instinctive, yeah, mostly. I had at the music school some friends who studied simultaneously with me and who played all different instruments like double bass, percussion, clarinet, trumpet and we played together regularly. One friend, a trumpeter at the school, said to me, "Oh, tomorrow I have this rendezvous with this beautiful girl. Could you take my place on the trumpet in the small orchestra?" "Ok, I will do it as a favour for you." I couldn’t really play the trumpet but I said, "Just explain it to me primitively and I will try my best." At that time I liked to try out all the orchestral instruments occasionally, so we earned some money and at the same time it was for me a good schooling. Professionally I played the piano finishing Moscow Conservatoire as a pianist and a composer at the same time. – Rodion Shchedrin

Four more performances of A Christmas Tale in St. Petersburg follow the premiere until 13 February 2016.

• Rodion Shchedrin - profile


• A Christmas Tale - work details and online score


• Mariinsky Theatre


• Interview with Shchedrin

 

 

On 20 December 2015, Christian Jost’s opera Death Knocks will begin its run at the Stadttheater Gießen in central Germany.

The 35-minute opera for mezzo-soprano, baritone, and chamber orchestra is based on Woody Allen’s play of the same name. In the play, dress manufacturer Nat Ackermans is unexpectedly visited by an attractive woman who claims to be Death. She says she has come to take him away with her, but Nat does not initially believe her or care about her mission — after all, he is a healthy and successful businessman. However, eventually realizing that he is indeed facing death, he challenges her with a game of Gin Rummy and negotiates a deal: if he loses, he will accept his fate; if he wins, Death has to grant him one more day.

Death: You want to come along now?
Nat: I’m sorry, but I cannot believe you are Death.
Death: Why? What did you expect, Liz Taylor?

The Gießen production of Death Knocks will form a double bill with Gustav Holst’s opera Savitri, with a total of four performances taking place until 19 February 2016. The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra will then present the work in two concert performances in Munich and Tutzing in March 2016.

• Christian Jost - profile


• Death Knocks - work details and online score


• Stadttheater Gießen

photo: © Rosa Frank, Hamburgisches Staatstheater (2009) / photo ed

 

Andrew Norman rounds out a busy year with the world premiere of his new piano concerto Split on 10 December 2015 with the New York Philharmonic. The work was written especially for virtuoso pianist Jeffrey Kahane, who will perform the premiere at David Geffen Hall under the baton of James Gaffigan.

The new concerto marks his sophomore effort of works for piano and orchestra, following the successful premiere of Suspend in May of 2014 with Gustavo Dudamel leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic and pianist Emanuel Ax. Split is a 25-minute tour-de-force in one movement. In approaching the piece, Norman was inspired by "the wit, vitality, and expressive character" of Kahane’s playing. It also takes on a mischievous theme between the soloist and orchestra:

I started with the idea of casting Jeffrey as a mercurial trickster, wreaking havoc in and among the various sections of the orchestra, but as the piece progressed he became less the prankster and more the pranked, an unwitting protagonist trapped in a Rube Goldbergian labyrinth of causes and effects who tries, with ever greater desperation, to find his way out of the madness and on to some peaceful plane. – Andrew Norman

Split was composed alongside another large-scale concerto, Switch, for percussion and orchestra, which was hailed as "hyperkinetic" and "an instant hit" (The Salt Lake Tribune) following its premiere last month with Colin Currie and the Utah Symphony Orchestra. Switch receives its UK premiere on 11 December 2015 with Currie joining the BBC Symphony Orchestra at Barbican Hall, conducted by Sakari Oramo.

• Andrew Norman - profile


• Split - work details


• New York Philharmonic


• BBC Symphony Orchestra

photo: © Timothy Andres / photo ed

(12/07/15)

 

Preludes for saxophone quartet, string orchestra and percussion will be premiered at the Brucknerhaus in Linz on 30 November by the The Raschèr Saxophone Quartet with Dennis Russell Davies conducting the Bruckner Orchester Linz.

Following from Say’s only other work for saxophone, Suite (2014), Preludes
is in four sections, each inspired by a literary classic: Hermann Hesse’s "Siddhartha", Dostoyevsky’s "White Nights", Kafka’s "The Metamorphosis" and Albert Camus’ "The Outsider".  The composer borrows motifs from these complex emotional worlds and portrays them in the music: Oriental soundscapes — such as the middle-eastern dance rhythms in "The Outsider", first appearing in the percussion and then adopted by the saxophone quartet — give the piece an exotic flavour.

All my compositions, as indeed my life does, take place between Eastern and Western musical lineages. Turkish music has a stronger rhythmical character, German music has a great history. Both cultures interact with each other. – Fazıl Say

The programme is repeated at the Vienna Musikverein on 1 December 2015 and the composer joins the orchestra for both concerts as soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 12 in A major, KV 414.

• Fazıl Say - profile


• Preludes - work details


• Bruckner Orchester Linz

photo: © Marco Borggreve

 

The Cleveland Orchestra performs the world premiere of Bernard Rands's Concerto for English Horn and Orchestra on 27 November 2015 with soloist Robert Walters. Lionel Bringuier leads the premiere, which takes place at Severance Hall. Rands's Concerto was commissioned by the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music for Robert Walters and The Cleveland Orchestra. Walters has taught English horn at Oberlin since 2006 and has been solo English horn with The Cleveland Orchestra since 2004.

Concerto for English Horn and Orchestra is a three movement work with titles suggesting their character and form: Fantasia, Aubade, and Hommage. The third and final movement is a tribute to Debussy whose music has had a strong influence on Rands throughout his career. Debussy's "Jeux" is a notable subtext to this movement.

Though no quotations from Debussy's music are used, the spirit of "Jeux" is evoked – sometimes quite overtly and at other times rather mysteriously. – Bernard Rands

Debussy's "Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune" and Berlioz's "Symphonie fantastique" accompany Rands's Concerto on the program. Subsequent performances take place on 28 and 29 November 2015.

Bernard Rands - profile
Concerto for English Horn and Orchestra - information
The Cleveland Orchestra

 

On 20 November 2015, Ensemble PHACE will give the world premiere of Chaya Czernowin’s Knights of the strange at the Wien Modern festival. Guitarist Yaron Deutsch and accordionist Krassimir Sterev will join the ensemble for the performance, conducted by Simeon Pironkoff at the Konzerthaus in Vienna.

The title Knights of the strange comes from a book written by Czernowin’s son, Ko, when he was four. The book consists mainly of quotations from situations in everyday domestic life, and the work plays on these asking the performers to include spoken references to their own children or parents. Within the ensemble piece is a duo for electric guitar and accordion, which also exists as an autonomous work with the same title. Thus these two instruments somehow form a musical symbiosis with the other instruments of the ensemble.

Knights of the strange is a piece of music poetry. Where a few words highlight the speculative and poetic connections between dreams, reality and reflection. The duo is like an independent plant from another climate inside the jungle of the tutti version. It is a very close look at how impulse and reaction, when faced with some random element, can take quite a surprising turn into an unexpected territory. – Chaya Czernowin

The duo version of Knights of the strange was premiered in summer 2015 at a portrait concert at Gare du Nord, Basel. In March 2016, as part of the Green Umbrella Festival, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla will conduct the LA Phil New Music Group in the American premiere of the ensemble version at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles.

• Chaya Czernowin - profile


• Knights of the strange - work details


• Chaya Czernowin - website


• Wien Modern


• PHACE - contemporary music

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