MEMETERIA by Thomas May

April 18, 2022 • 10:22 am Comments Off on RIP Sir Harrison Birtwistle (1934-2022)

RIP Sir Harrison Birtwistle (1934-2022)

Birtwistle on Birtwistle

The fiercely independent and original English composer Harrison Birtwistle has died at the age of 87, his publisher Boosey & Hawkes reported today. He died at his home in Mere, UK.

Jonathan Cross wrote an assessment for Boosey: “He knew what he wanted, and he simply did what he did. Pan, embodied in Panic’s solo saxophone, was – like Orpheus, like the Green Knight, like the Minotaur – just another of those mythical creatures with which Birtwistle became obsessed, and through which he was able to articulate deep ideas about time and identity, longing and loss. This is the essence of the music of Harrison Birtwistle, and the source of its power. This will be its enduring legacy. And it is to this music we shall return time and again to continue to mine its immense riches.”

Observes David Beard: “Birtwistle’s music reflects an intensely personal vision of the world in which degrees of musical complexity may be related to our experience of the world by metaphors of journeying, ritual, or multiple perspectives of the same object. Although influenced to varying degrees by Stravinsky, Messiaen, Boulez and Cage, his distinctive characteristics include wind- and percussion-led antiphony, extended melodies free-flowing over a mechanical ground, and shifting pulses that question our ability to count clock time. Textures may become densely layered, but from such soundscapes individual voices speak with fanfare- or dance-like gestures. Birtwistle’s music, in other words, is always firmly grounded in the body. This should come as no surprise given his early experience of musical theatre ….”

A tweet from younger peer Thomas Adès observes: “Harrison Birtwistle once said of Messiaen ‘when he dies the whole house of cards will fall down’. I feel a bit like it has fallen today.”

UPDATE: And Monday 18 April 2022 continues to bring tragic news in the classical music world: also announced today were the deaths of two pianists, the legendary Romanian Radu Lupu and his younger American colleague Nicholas Angelich. This truly is the end of an era.

Filed under: Harrison Birtwistle, music news

April 11, 2022 • 2:03 pm Comments Off on Joel Sachs’s Farewell Concert

Joel Sachs’s Farewell Concert

It’s hard to process the reality that Joel Sachs has decided to retire as of June 30 after 52 years of teaching and music making at Juilliard; he will hold the status of professor emeritus. Generations of musicians and musical thinkers have been mentored by Sachs, who as a conductor, pianist, and curator has also made invaluable contributions to new music. I’ve been immensely privileged over the years to benefit from his incredible wisdom while editing the programs he single-handedly writes for Juilliard’s always-stimulating Focus festival at the beginning of the year. Zachary Woolfe wrote about Sachs and the 2022 edition of Focus in The New York Times here.

Sachs tonight conducts the New Juilliard Ensemble, which he founded and has led for 29 seasons, in their final concert of the season and his own farewell concert (at 7.30 pm ET).

The program, which will be live-streamed, is characteristically intriguing and full of discoveries:

Yangfan XU Fantastic Creatures of the Mountains and Seas
Lennox Thuy Duong, Narrator
Paul FREHNER Sometimes the Devil Plays Fate
Mary Beth Nelson, Mezzo-Soprano
Diana SYRSE The Invention of Sex
Diana Syrse, Soprano
Paul DESENNE Sinfonía Burocràtica ed’Amazzònica

A digital program can be found accesible digital program.

Writes Sachs in his farewell announcement: “Of course, I have mixed feelings–making music with our great young performers is always a huge pleasure. But having arrived at age 82 in excellent health, it struck me as time to move on to other projects–recording, performing as a pianist, and writing–and to indulge in luxuries that come with an open schedule, such as more traveling and more time with my children and grandchildren.”

I’m looking forward to the next project Joel Sachs will be sharing with us. In the meantime, warmest congratulations!

Filed under: Joel Sachs, Juilliard, music news, new music

April 11, 2022 • 9:35 am Comments Off on St. Matthew Passion from Raphaël Pichon and Pygmalion

St. Matthew Passion from Raphaël Pichon and Pygmalion

I reviewed the new Raphaël Pichon/Pygmalion recording of the St. Matthew Passion for Early Music America:

Perhaps the best way to adequately describe the extremely intense, 3-D quality of motion that Raphäel Pichon and the Pygmalion ensemble achieve in the St. Matthew Passion’s opening chorus is by way of comparison with another art: say, Stendhal’s description of the young Fabrizio caught up in the fog of Napoleonic battle in The Charterhouse of Parma (which Balzac praised as a marvel that “often contains a whole book in a single page”)….

continue

Filed under: Bach, CD review, Early Music America

April 8, 2022 • 11:45 am Comments Off on Morlot Leads the Next Chapter in the Seattle Symphony’s Sibelius Adventure

Morlot Leads the Next Chapter in the Seattle Symphony’s Sibelius Adventure

Ludovic Morlot reunites with the Seattle Symphony (image: Nick Klein)

For the second installment in the Seattle Symphony’s Sibelius cycle, emeritus conductor Ludovic Morlot rejoined the orchestra to lead a program centered around the Second Symphony. The occasion inspired some spectacular, edge-of-your-seat playing on Thursday night.

The concert started off with another in the series of commissions of new works from contemporary composers that find a way to “relate” to each of the Sibelius symphonies. In February, when the cycle launched with the Sibelius First (conducted by the talented Ruth Reinhardt), the pairing presented an intriguingly provocative new piece by Ellen Reid. The Puerto Rican composer Angélica Negrón faced the challenge of responding to what is, for many Sibelius fans, the best-loved of the seven symphonies. Color Shape Transmission, the result, offers an imaginatively fresh take on the phenomenon of acoustic space and the orchestra as a kind of mobile aural sculpture. Negrón spins her vast array of forces into a kaleidoscope of mysterious timbres, rapturously sustained clusters, and subtle echo and richochet effects. The impression of a ritual or procession brought to mind the mystery of the Second Symphony’s Andante, with its walking bass and swelling hymn.

I seem to recall that this program had originally been planned to include Sibelius’s Violin Concerto with Isabelle Faust. She was the soloist in Stravinsky’s contribution to the genre instead, but it was a wonderful match and proved captivating from first note to last. Faust displayed multiple personalities, all equally convincing, in Stravinsky’s one-of-a-kind take on the concerto idea: alternately cheeky, heart-breaking, whimsical, and invigorating. Morlot’s tenure with the SSO included some especially memorable encounters with Stravinsky, so it was gratifying to find him shedding light on a different aspect of the composer, tending so carefully to his piquant timbral combinations of woodwinds and soloist; concertmaster Noah Geller matched Faust’s ravishing tone in the duet between both violinists in the Capriccio finale.

But what left the most resounding impression was the epic sweep conveyed by the Second Symphony. In this account, Morlot navigated the SSO through Sibelius’s drastic transformations of landscape with a convincing sense of purpose. Sunlight shifting on the meadows, impending storms, glorious new vistas opened up — the sonic imagery flowed generously, but Morlot shaped its ebbs and flows with architectural understanding, aside from the occasional haze produced by a passing sonic imbalance. He homed in on Sibelius’s use of tension and release to thrilling effect.

In his excellent program notes, Christopher DeLaurenti points out that Sibelius had little use for the political purposes which his work seemed to serve, while at the same time hinting at the Second’s uncanny relevance for the terrible present moment. Its premiere in 1902, he writes, “was welcomed by the Finnish public as a missive of nationalist resilience against their Russian overlords.” He also quotes the composer’s friend and champion Robert Kajanus hailing the Second as “a broken-hearted protest against all the injustice that threatens at the present time to deprive the sun of its light and our flowers of their scent.” Grasping the music’s agonized heroism, this performance invested the final moments of the Second with cathartic grandeur.

The full program will be performed again on Saturday, 9 April, at 8pm. If you need a dose of hope, don’t miss it.

Filed under: commissions, Ludovic Morlot, Seattle Symphony, Sibelius, Uncategorized

April 8, 2022 • 1:38 am Comments Off on Mendelssohn Festival in Lucerne

Mendelssohn Festival in Lucerne

Tonight in Lucerne, the festival year will be launched with a three-day Mendelssohn Festival — which is also the first in a new spring residency for the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Riccardo Chailly that will complement their customary Summer Festival performances.

This mini-Spring Festival will explore Mendelssohn in conjunction with his leading contemporaries, including, for the opening tonight, with his chief antagonist, Richard Wagner.

Anne-Sophie Mutter and friends will also join with musicians from the Lucerne Festival Orchestra for a special benefit concert for Ukraine on Saturday, performing chamber music by Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Shostakovich.

John Corigliano’s Triathlon at San Francisco Symphony

In his programs this weekend with San Francisco Symphony, guest conductor Giancarlo Guerrero will lead the world premiere of Triathlon by John Corigliano. Now 84, the composer has contributed a major work to the saxophone repertoire in this concerto for the remarkable Tim McAllister. I had the privilege of writing the program note for this world premiere. The rest of the program presents music by Adolphus Hailstork, Antonio Estévez, and Astor Piazzolla.

program notes

Filed under: commissions, John Corigliano, program notes, San Francisco Symphony

March 29, 2022 • 2:27 pm Comments Off on San Francisco Symphony Announces 2022-23 Season

San Francisco Symphony Announces 2022-23 Season

San Francisco Symphony today announced the program for its 2022-23 season. Lots of great stuff is lined up. Esa-Pekka Salonen’s third season with SFS promises world premieres of works by Samuel Adams, Magnus Lindberg, and winner of the 2021 Emerging Black Composers Project Trevor Weston, as well as the U.S. premieres of Daniel Kidane’s Precipice Dances and works by Danny Elfman and Outi Tarkiainen, along with the West Coast premiere of Julia Wolfe’s Her Story.

There will be a two-week theme focus in October on music involving “myth, magic, and horror,” including the suite from Béla Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin, Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, HK Gruber’s Frankenstein!!, the suite from Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho, Franz Liszt’s Totentanz, and Modest Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain.

Some other highlights: Igor Levit will be Artist-in-Residence and will give a rare performance of Ferruccio Busoni’s wild, choral Piano Concerto. The orchestra will present Gabriel Kahane’s emergency shelter intake form, and Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas returns for four weeks of programs. The orchestra will tour in spring 2023 to Paris, Luxembourg, and Hamburg.

EPS and SFS are also undertaking a four-year partnership with Peter Sellars, launching in June 2022 with a staged production of Igor Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex. Kaija Saariaho’s Adriana Mater comes in June 2023, and future seasons will present new Sellars-staged productions of Olivier Messiaen’s La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (2024) and Leoš Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen (2025), the latter featuring SFS featuring Collaborative Partner Julia Bullock.

States Salonen: “I don’t believe in the concept of canon, especially canon as something finished or immovable. If you look back at concert programs from 150 years ago, what then was understood as canon is very different from today. We don’t need the concept of canon as long as music is a dynamic thing that keeps changing, because we keep changing. There’s a tradition of these works we love and want to take care of, there’s a sort of gardener’s duty that we have. We have to take care of the old trees, but we also have to make sure that there’s new growth everywhere, because without the new growth the trees actually won’t survive. Ultimately, it’s all about relevance. Every day that goes by stretches the virtual rubber band between, say, us and Beethoven. And the fear of course is that one day we come to the point where it snaps, and we no longer feel that it’s relevant, which would be a catastrophe in a way because it’s wonderful. The only way to keep that relevance and connection is to make sure that there’s new music. There’s new growth, new composers, new artists who keep this art form alive and take it places that we cannot even imagine. That’s the most important thing—the surprise, the new directions. I want to be part of that process. That’s why we want to commission works from young composers and support new artists. We want to engage new performers and expand the horizons of what we do.”

You can see the full listing for the 2022-23 season here.

Filed under: Esa-Pekka Salonen, music news, Peter Sellars, San Francisco Symphony

March 27, 2022 • 6:20 pm Comments Off on Jimmy López Bellido’s Ephemerae

Jimmy López Bellido’s Ephemerae

Javier Perianes and the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo led by Alexander Shelley recently gave the South American premiere of Jimmy López Bellido’s synesthesia-inspired piano concerto Ephemerae — available for the next few weeks from the stream captured above. The program also includes Jessie Montgomery’s Coincident Dances and Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony From the New World.

Perianes gave the world premiere of Ephemerae on 23 January 2022 at Royal Festival Hall with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Jonathan Berman (filling in at the very last minute for the originally scheduled conductor, Klaus Mäkelä). The brilliant and busy composer is also looking forward to unveiling his Symphony No. 3, which the Reno Philharmonic will premiere on 7 and 8 May 2022 under the baton of Laura Jackson. And for the Berkeley Symphony’s 50th anniversary, he has written Rise, which the orchestra and its chief conductor Joseph Young will premiere on 12 June 2022.

The composer writes: “Fragrances may be amongst the most fleeting and ethereal sensations most sentient beings experience in their daily lives. They come in a myriad of varieties, making them incredibly hard to verbalize and categorize. Although elusive, they are also capable of making lasting impressions, remaining in our memory long after they are gone. The perfume industry has found ways to harness their power by meticulously studying them and classifying them. Michael Edwards’ Fragrance Wheel is perhaps the most known successful attempt and has become an industry standard. Divided into three movements, Ephemerae journeys along the whole fragrance spectrum, from the high floral, fruity, and marine tones, all the way to the dark tones of dry and mossy woods…”

Filed under: Jimmy López, music news, piano

March 25, 2022 • 2:12 pm Comments Off on Michael Tilson Thomas with the National Symphony

Michael Tilson Thomas with the National Symphony

Honored to have been able to write the program notes for this weekend’s National Symphony concerts with Michael Tilson Thomas. The program features his own remarkable, unclassifiable Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind.

Filed under: American music, Michael Tilson Thomas, National Symphony, program notes

March 24, 2022 • 11:01 am 1

Seattle Symphony Announces 2022-23 Season

The Seattle Symphony Orchestra (SSO) just announced the lineup for the 2022-23 season. It’s the first time since I’ve been following the SSO that this announcement comes without a music director in place. So the first thing that stands out is the long list of guest conductors: I count a total of 30 (!), including such luminaries as Marin Alsop, Tan Dun, and Osmo Vänskä, who will close out the season with Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony on 22 and 24 June. (Asher Fisch’s moving recent account of Das Lied von der Erde marked the first time Mahler resounded again in Benaroya Hall since the pandemic, and Morlot is set to conduct the Sixth next week. The Second is the only Mahler lined up for next season.)

No fewer than 13 are set to make their SSO debuts. And there will also be familiar faces: particularly Conductor Emeritus Ludovic Morlot, who has the honor of leading the opening night concert on 17 September along with two later programs.

As to new music, five commissioned works will be presented (including both SSO concerts and the Octave 9 chamber series), including a world premiere by 2022-23 artist-in-residence Angelique Poteat (scheduled for opening night) and new compositions by Freida Abtan, Enrico Chapela, Dai Fujikura, and
Abel Selaocoe. Other contemporary voices among the 25 living composers represented include Gabriella Smith, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Tan Dun, Gina Gillie, Nina Shekhar, Salina Fisher, Qigang Chen, Caroline Shaw, Shanyse Strickland, and Hannah Lash.

The Symphony No. 7 by Sibelius will be paired with a world premiere by Dai Fujikura in response to the Finn’s last symphony. But that’s the only Sibelius that figures on next season’s schedule. It appears that the Sibelius Cycle that had been intended as a highlight under former music director Thomas Dausgaard will be left incomplete. I haven’t seen any statement on the matter but will update as soon as I do. Which means that by the end of next season, as far as I understand it, SSO will have given Symphonies 1, 2, and 7, together with their corresponding paired commissions (music by Ellen Reid and Angélica Negrón for Symphonies 1 and 2, respectively) — with 3, 4, and 5 apparently falling by the wayside. Since each of these was to be accompanied by a newly commissioned work, I wonder what will become of the “missing” commissions….

There’s also a lot of love for Rachmaninoff, who only seems to increase in popularity each season. The Spring will bring a “Rachfest” devoted to the four piano concertos, featuring pianists Dominic Cheli, Rémi Geniet, and Albert Cano Smit, with Katharina Winkor conducting — all but Geniet making their SSO debuts. Plus, David Robertson will conduct the rarely heard Symphony No. 1 (the work whose fiasco premiere nearly led Rachmaninoff to abandon composing) and yet another program of the ubiquitous Piano Concerto No. 2 in January (with Nobuyuki Tsujii as the soloist and SSO newcomer Jirí Rožeň conducting). The Rachfest originally planned for spring 2020 was cancelled when the pandemic arrived, but 2023 has the added bonus of being the 150th anniversary year of the Russian composer’s birth.

I’m especially excited about the new works by Poteat and Fujikura, as well as the incredible Gabriella Smith’s Tidlewave Kitchen, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Cello Concerto with Nicholas Altstaedt, and the Seattle premiere of Tan Dun’s remarkable Buddha Passion (which I reviewed three years ago when Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic gave the U.S. premiere). And Octave 9 will present Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera and also welcome back cellist extraordinaire Seth Parker Woods for the world premiere of Freida Abtan’s My Heart is a River.

In fact, there’s a strong cello theme running through the programming, which includes a new work by Abel Selaocoe (featuring himself as the soloist) and Yue Bao conducting the Three Continents Cello Concerto by Nico Muhly, Sven Helbig, and Zhou Long, with the cellist Jan Vogler.

Link to the complete SSO season announcement press release here.

Filed under: commissions, music news, Seattle Symphony

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