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Contemporary Music at the
Collection
29th November 2013 7.30 pm
My idea for this concert
was to gather together a group of works of different character and objectives,
that somehow had a relationship to the spirit of my exhibition ‘The Archaeology
of the Frivolous’. There is no direct ‘link’ as such – more an excuse, if one
were needed, to hear some very interesting pieces of 20th century
music. And one piece of 21st century music.
Alban Berg 4 pieces for clarinet and Piano
Colin
Dudman clarinet
David
Williams piano
These pieces thought
brief, are complex. The work consists of only 63
measures. Berg writes in a very expressive and dramatic idiom. The clarinet
part introduces new clarinet techniques -
fluttertongue and echotone and is full of rapid changes in register and
dynamic. The work connects with the world of the German Expressionist artists
and poets – Kirchner, Hegel. Nolde, Dix and Grosz ,Rilke and Trakl, and looks
forward to the nightmare world of Wozzeck.
Colin
Dudman One Hundred Short Pieces for Clarinet and
Piano
The idea behind the "hundred" pieces - an
aspirational number - involves moving from the relative simplicity of purely
melodic pieces, where both instruments adopt a joint identity by playing
entirely in unison, towards a more overt expression of their own unique
character by accessing the sound-world accessible only to them, such as
harmony, or a simple crescendo on a sustained note.
Ligeti Cello Sonata
Rebecca
Hewes Cello
Of the
first movement of the Sonata, Dialogo, Ligeti wrote . . . It's a dialogue. Because it's like two people, a man and a
woman, conversing. I used the C string, the G string and the A string
separately... I had been writing much more "modern" music in 1946 and
1947, and then in '48 I began to feel that I should try to be more
"popular"... I attempted in this piece to write a beautiful melody,
with a typical Hungarian profile, but not a folksong... or only half, like in
Bartók or in Kodály—actually, closer to Kodály. The movement is marked
"Adagio, rubato, cantabile," It begins with two pairs of pizzicato chords separated by a glissando, The melody may have been
inspired by ancient modal tunes preserved
through the Eastern European folk music tradition .
Because
the second movement had the 'ambition' to become a sonata movement I wrote it
in sonata form. It is a virtuoso piece in my later style that is
closer to Bartók. I was 30 years old when I wrote it. I loved virtuosity and
took the playing to the edge of virtuosity much like Paganini.
Capriccio
is written almost entirely in an unrelenting 3/8 pattern, breaking only once,
abruptly in the middle for a truncated reminiscence of the Dialogo. The
movement is marked ‘Presto con slancio’ (very quick with impetus) and ‘forte
vigoroso’. The Dialogo returns briefly, and is followed by a full
recapitulation and coda,
Stockhausen Piano piece 9
David Williams Piano
The
Klavierstücke N.9 by Karlheinz Stockhausen is a highly characteristic and
unmistakably idiomatic piece. Composed between 1955-1961, the piece exemplifies
the composers intensive researches in the field of musical time. The piece
makes extensive use of the Fibonacci series in which each element is the sum of
the two immediately preceding it. [1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 etc ] . The piece
contrasts
‘pulsated
time’ - any rhythmical construct
which can be measured, compared, referenced through a clearly defined basic
unit or pulse, and
‘smooth(ed)
time’,
when
there is no clear reference beat or pulse.
While Piano piece 9 can be seen as an
extremely structured and cerebral
piece, it has a very emotive aspect to it as well. Time, so rigidly and
diadactically stated at the onset, dissolves into a galaxy of individual ,
seemingly personalised gestures as the piece progresses.
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Berio Sequenza lll for voice
Katie
Warnsby S0prano
One of Luciano Berio's
most fruitful sources of inspiration was his long collaboration with soprano
Cathy Berberian. Berio describes Sequenza III as
a three part invention - text, gesture and expression. Each element has its own
progression through the piece: the text gradually reveals itself; the vocal
gestures expand, contract and transform; and the expression maintains a level
of frenetic variety until the very last moments when, the task complete, it
becomes tranquil, all urgency gone..
The "text"
give
me a few words for a woman
to
sing a
truth allowing
us
to
build a house without worrying
before
night
comes
consists of vocatives
by Markus Kutter; meaning instead emerges via the soprano's evocation of
particular expressive formulas: surprise, frustration, humour. Berio's
score – a graphic score - consists 15
techniques, among them “salvoes of laughter,” “teeth-chattering,” “tongue-trill
against the upper lip,” as well as 44 agogic markings such as “far away,”
“dreamy,” “ecstatic,” “extremely intense” and “fading away.” Thus Sequenza
III is a unique challenge, an incomparable piece of musical theatre for a
singer.
George Crumb Voice of the Whale ‘Vox
Balaenae’
David
Williams Piano
Rebecca
Hewes Cello
Rebecca Bayes Flute
Inspired by the singing of the humpbacked whale. The
various sections of the work are played without pause: The "Vocalise (...
for the beginning of time)" features the flute with the performer
simultaneously playing and singing parallel lines into the flute, and then
singing one sustained note into the flute while fingering fast arpeggios. The
"Variations on Sea-Time ... Sea Theme", "Archeozoic (Var.
I)" and "Proterozoic (Var. II)" are built from cello harmonics
with string glissandos and silently depressed clusters on the keys of the
electric piano. "Paleozoic (Var. III)" is built from flute harmonics
and cycles on cello and piano. "Mesozoic (Var. IV)" has cello and
flute melodies in unison underscored with punctuated patterns on the piano.
"Cenozoic (Var. V)" is played "Dramatic, with a sense of
imminent destiny" is constructed from piano tremolos and accents, cello
trills with simultaneous glissando shifting, and extremely fast triplet
patterns on the flute. The concluding "Sea-Nocturne (...for the end of
time)" builds an underwater atmosphere texture which gradually fragments.
Crumb’s response to naturally occurring sound moves
between the analysis, realisation and occasional imitation of these sounds in
terms of instrumental colour, and a personal ‘mystical’ response to his
‘imagined’ meanings’ of these in a metaphorical and or mythological sense.
The players
Rebecca Hewes
Katie
Warnsby
Rebecca Bayes
Colin Dudman
David Williams
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