presenteert
Lydia Forbes - violin
Danny Tunick - percussion
Programma
Mark Gibbons -how much, how little (2001)*
Robert Fanelli -Tunick Snak Pak (1994)
Toon Vandevorst -Elegy for a lost childhood (2000)*
Jeff Hamburg -Rapide (1995)
Juliet Palmer -Starving Poetry (1994)
Tera de Marez Oyens -Mood Mobile (1984)
Dante Oei -Emma (2001)*
Rocco Havelaar -Sonate voor viool en slagwerk (2000)*
*first performance
Toelichtingen
Dante Oei -Emma (2001)*
Emma is een boek van Jane Austen.
Viool en slagwerk spelen om de beurt en tegen het einde komen ze samen. Ik
weet niet of dat iets met het boek te maken heeft (d.w.z. of het boek ook zo
afloopt) want ik heb het niet gelezen en halverwege de film viel ik in
slaap. Maar ik vind het wel een mooie titel want het lijkt een beetje op
'Herma' en dat is een stuk van Xenakis en ik hou van Xenakis (en Nicole
houdt van Jane Austen).
Toon Vandevorst -Elegy for a lost childhood (2000)*
"'Elegy for a lost childhood' (november 2000) is een soort rouwverwerking.
Het stuk betreurt de situatie waar de natuurlijke en vreugdevolle expressie
van een kind moet wijken voor de neurose van een volwassene. Muzikaal gezien
blijkt dit uit het feit dat het stuk overduidelijk gebaseerd is op wat je
zou kunnen noemen Onschuldig Materiaal, dat echter nauwelijks in zijn
zuivere vorm optreedt, doch overtrokken en uiteengereten. Het stuk werd
geschreven voor Lydia Forbes."
Steven Scher -Brechtstimme (1988)
Mark Gibbons -how much, how little (2001)*
"how much, how little" was written on commission from Danny Tunick and Lydia Forbes,
and is dedicated to them. Both have been supporters of my music through what can
only be called 'very lean times' and i will always be grateful to them.
The piece itself is an ending of sorts. It brings to a conclusion a group of works
completed over the past eight years, and in addition to being performed by itself,
serves as the coda to a larger work called "the floating bangle." In an effort to
keep this note short, i'll say only that a good deal of my recent work is in some way about
the part of speach that is other than what the words themselves mean. "how much,
how little" recapitulates some of those ideas.
Jeff Hamburg -Rapide (1995)
A piece of music is inevitably about other pieces, thus my composition teacher told
me many years ago. It is then no
shock when Theo Muller calls and asks for a violin solo piece for his 'ConSequenze
Festival', a project centering on
Berio's Sequenzas. Besides, I am an old hand at writing commentaries after the flautist
Eleonore Pameijer's Telemaim
Project, in which ten composers wrote musical commentaries on Telemann's flute fantasies.
So where does one start: a recording of Berio's Sequenza VIII for violin performed
by Carlo Chiarappa, for whom I am
to write my piece. After several minutes of listening, I turn off the CD-player. I
hear almost everything I dislike about
modern music: harmonic relationships are replaced by 'pitch collections', phrases
are glued together ('montage'
technique) instead of logically following one another, it is rhythmically uninteresting
since it is freely notated (phrases
are either faster or slower and have no rhythmical relationship: this is definitely
related to the absence of harmonic
relationships). The strength of Berio's piece is in its theatrics.
Where to next then? Oddly enough, I turned to the six sonatas for unaccompanied violin
by Bach. This in itself is not
odd, as Bach is a beloved source of inspiration to many composers. But it turns out
that Berio himself was inspired by
the grandiose Chaconne from the second Sonata. (Did I subconsciously hear that? I
doubt it very much, since even after
knowing all of this, I still seeónot hearóonly a very superficial connection between
the two pieces.)
I, on the other hand, took a liking to the third Sonata, especially the first movement,
the Adagio. The consistant
build-upóharmonic and thematicóresulting in the thirty-second note releases of energy.
Just what Louis Andriessen
taught me that music is: building up of expectations and their consequent release.
This, in a nutshell, is the musico-inspirational background to Rapide. But where does
the title come from? It is not, as
Theo Muller thought, a complex anagram on the name of Chiarappa. It is indeed a reference
to one of my other
obessions: chess.
Many aspects of chess are interesting in their relationship not only to music but
to theater as well. I am often jealous of
the concentration of a public during a chess tournament. Not only does everyone follow
the action, one can sense the
excitement as hundreds of brains are simultaneously creating their own scenario of
what will come. Imagine a concert
hall filled with music lovers fluent in current musical language, listening to the
discourse of the composer, fervently
trying to anticipate where the composer will go.
Another related aspect is that of tempo. A chess opening can be played rather swiftly,
the tempo suddenly decreasing to
less than a snail's pace during the middle game, only to increase again to a hectic
pace while trying to beat the clock. In
a sense, Rapide emulates this. Rapid chess, by the way, is when both players have
to complete all of their moves within
20 minutes (a normal symphony, I mean tournament game, can last hours)
So Rapide opens in a flurry, exposing the musical material quickly (a), setting the
scene for the rest of the piece.
Suddenly we reach the middle game (b), how are we going to do develop the pieces (well,
in this case, the notes and
rhythmical motives). After much deliberation, slow adjustment, nuancesóthe clock is
ticking and it's off to the end
game (c) before our flag falls! All of the pieces have been exchanged except for a
few pawns and in the last few minutes
(measures, that is)óa few reminiscences of the middle game (vague threats, a thrust
here or there)(d). The game is
adjourned and the violinist's next move is sealed in an envelope.
Robert Fanelli -Tunick Snak Pak (1994)
"Tunick Snak Pack" was written as a tribute to Danny Tunick's prodigious ability to
consume large amounts of food. The basic musical idea behind it is a repetitive
rhythmic and chordal pattern that exists constantly as a backdrop for the melodies
to adhere to. The rhythm is modelled after the rhythm of chewing a hamburger.
Rocco Havelaar -Sonate voor viool en slagwerk (2000)*
When I started writing 'sonate voor viool en slagwerk' I felt the desire to create
my own version of a classical sonate. To me that meant, on the one hand, looking
for a certain balance and trying to create 'pure' music, looking at music as a language
and its form, without reference to anything external. It also meant trying not to be carried
away by my own desire to create music with 'meaning'. On the other hand I enjoyed
trying to do this with a very non-classical combination, and therefore I chose to
limit the number of instruments with definite pitch in the percussion part, to stay away
from the classical violin/piano combination as much as possible. The piece has two
movements.
Ik hoop dat je het hiermee redt, groeten, Rocco.
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