Contemporary Music Ensemble
Timothy Weiss, conductor
Milan Vitek, guest conductor
Chaya Czernowin, composer-in-residence
Steuart Pincombe, cello
James Kalyn, soprano saxophone
Leah Asher, violin
Brendan Shea, violin
Warner Concert Hall
December 11, 2009, 8:00 pm
Concert No. 130
Ritorno degli snovidenia (1976)
Luciano Berio
(1925–2003)
Steuart Pincombe, cello
Sarah Pyle, Peng Zhou, Jonathan Figueroa, flute
Rachel Messing, Claire Chenette, oboe Brad Cherwin, Ian Copeland, clarinet
Paul Deronne, bass clarinet Michael Matushek, Drew Pattison, bassoon
Raymond Kelly, saxophone Nicolee Kuester, William Eisenberg, horn
Donnie McEwan, Emily Lawyer, trumpet
Zachary Guiles, Jacqueline O’Kelly, trombone
Jonathan Seiberlich, tuba Danny Walden, piano
Marina Kifferstein, Allison Lint, Garrett Openshaw, violin
Jane Mitchell, Jesse Yukimura, DJ Cheek, viola
Avery Waite, Dylan Messina, Zizai Ning, cello
Greg Whittemore, Janie Cowan, bass
Clear Sky
Josh Levine
James Kalyn, soprano saxophone
Sarah Pyle, flute Lin Ma, clarinet James Kalyn, saxophone
Zachary Guiles, trombone Eugene Kim, piano Ryan Packard, percussion
Samantha Bounkeua, violin Jane Mitchell, viola Dylan Messina, cello
Greg Whittemore, bass
Intermission
Anea Crystal (2008) (North American premiere)
Seed I
Seed II
Anea
Chaya Czernowin
(b. 1957)
Quartet I
Marina Kifferstein, Garrett Openshaw, violin
Jesse Yukimura, viola
Zizai Ning, cello
Quartet II
Samantha Bounkeua, Allison Lint, violin
DJ Cheek, viola
Dylan Messina, cello
Concerto grosso No. 3 (1985)
I. Allegro
II. Risoluto
III. Pesante
IV. (Lento)
V. Moderato
Alfred Schnittke
(1934–1998)
Milan Vitek, conductor
Leah Asher, Brendan Shea, violin
Allison Lint, Garrett Openshaw, Samantha Bounkeua, Marina Kifferstein, violin I
Lisha Gu, Jenny Elfving, Lisa Goddard, Jing Qiao, violin II
Jane Mitchell, Jesse Yukimura, DJ Cheek, viola Avery Waite, Zizai Ning, cello
Greg Whittemore, Janie Cowan, bass Zachary Mathes, percussion
Miles Fellenberg, piano Danny Walden, harpsichord
Nathan Heidelberger, Andrew Ralston, ensemble manager
Michael Roest, ensemble manager & librarian
Please silence all cell phones and refrain from the use of video cameras
unless prior arrangements have been made with the conductor.
The use of flash cameras is prohibited. Thank you.
Program Notes
Ritorno degli snovidenia
for solo cello and 30 instrumentalists (1976)
by Luciano Berio (Oneglia, Italy, 1925 - Rome, 2003)
Instrumentation: cello solo, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 3 clarinets, alto saxophone, 2 bassoons,
2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, tuba, piano, 3 violins, 3 violas, 3 cellos, 2 double
basses.
Snovidenie (plural snovidenia) means ‛dream’ (literally, ‛the seeing of a dream’) in
Russian. The choice of this word has to do with Mstislav Rostropovich, for whom the
piece was written, and who played the first performance with Paul Sacher and the
Basel Chamber Orchestra on January 20, 1977.
Berio disclosed that the ‟dreams” that ‟return” in the work’s title had to do with
songs from the October 1917 revolution in Russia -- songs that symbolized a ‟dream
betrayed by history.” The songs are never heard in full or, indeed, in any form that is
readily recognizable even as a fragment: Berio only used some isolated melodic cells
from the songs, and disguised them in such a way that they can never be identified by
listening.
What one does perceive is a virtuosic solo cello part that is present almost without
interruption throughout the entire piece. In the atmospheric opening section, Berio’s
precisely notated rhythms have the effect or free rhythm (or tempo fluttuante, sd the
composers call it in the score). The meandering cello line is intertwined with similar
melodies in the muted trumpet, the bass clarinet, the alto saxophone and other
instruments. Gradually, a complex contrapuntal web develops, although the cello
always retains its role as the leader. Yet the ‟plot,” and the texture, thickens as more
and more tortuous instrumental lines are superimposed on top of one another. The
texture is enlivened by nervous repeated-note figures and rapid piano flourishes.
Then, surprisingly, we hear an almost literal reprise of the work’s opening but this
time, instead of a precisely coordinated tempo fluttuante, an aleatoric passage begins
with the instruments repeating their melodic figures independently from one another.
In the final ‟stretto,” with the rapid repeated-note figure taking over the entire
ensemble, the piano emerges as the soloist’s principal partner, before the work reaches
its truly dreamlike ending.
~ Peter Laki
Clear Sky, for soprano saxophone and ensemble, is nexus of reflections on my mother's
death after over a decade of physical decline. The title refers to the moment itself of her
passing when, after days of nearly incessant rain, the clouds broke and sunlight entered
the room where she lay.
The soloist's part is a strange form of theme-and-variations, where the
"variations" are attempts to recover a theme that has been nearly lost. (Consistent with
much of my work, a large portion of the piece's melodic and rhythmic material and
architecture derive from this germinal theme.) The ensemble is organized into two
main groups. Participating in the variations as if in a series of interweaving dreams, the
members of the first group—flute, clarinet, trombone, and cello—are like projections
of the soloist's most intimate memories. The clarinet has an especially deep connection
with the saxophone. The music played by the remaining ensemble instruments is more
objective and ritualistic in character, a kind of fragmented, elusive chaconne whose
harmonies evolve even as they cycle. Juxtaposed with these musical elements are
occasional aural "visions" inspired by the blinding, shimmering reflection of light on
bodies of water.
Clear Sky was first performed at the 2006 Rümlingen Festival in Switzerland. The
saxophone soloist was Marcus Weiss, for whom the part was composed, with the
festival ensemble conducted by Peter Rundel. It is dedicated to the memory of Gloria
Levine.
~ Josh Levine
Anea is an invented name for a music-crystal modeled on an ionic crystal. It is a piece
written in three independent and individual movements which can be played separately
or together.
Seed I and Seed II are for string quartet and Anea is for string octet, being built of
both Seeds together played simultaneously with some changes. The pieces belong to
the series “Shifting Gravity” together with the pieces Sheva (Seven) and Sahaf (Drift).
The five pieces on this series are each a concise and concentrated focus on a
singular physical gesture. Close examination of the gesture reveals the strange physical
laws of the world in which the gesture exists, and the body performing it. One could
conceive of Anea Crystal as an ionic crystal of gestures.
Anea Cyrstal is dedicated to Johannes Kalitzke.
~ Chaya Czernowin
Concerto grosso No. 3 (1985)
by Alfred Schnittke (Engels, Russia, 1934 - Hamburg, 1998)
Instrumentation: 2 solo violins, 4 bells, harpsichord (doubling on piano and celesta),
strings.
Alfred Schnittke would be 75 years old this year; the anniversary is celebrated with
concerts, festivals and symposia worldwide. In the Russian-German master’s unique
blend of traditionalism and modernism (post-modernism?), the past is destroyed before
our very ears, yet it continues to haunt us in strange and utterly unpredictable ways.
Schnittke was fascinated with the idea of the Baroque concerto grosso, and wrote
a total of six works with that title. The third of these works, in five movements, was
composed in 1985, the 300th anniversary year of J.S. Bach’s birth. The opening of the
first movement is a clear nod to the Brandenburg Concertos, but strange things start
happening almost from the start. The staggered entrances raise the dissonance level,
there are more and more distant key changes until -- after an ominous bellstroke -- the
tonality becomes completely submerged in a series of chromatic glissandos and the
motoric rhythm is obscured by increasingly complex polymeters. The stylistic games
continue in the second movement, where Bach’s solo violin works are evoked,
similarly distorted in harmony and with some wild dramatic effects.
The third movement has less to do with Bach than with the slow movement of
Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. Here the austere unisons of the string orchestra
receive not one but two different contrasting counterparts: the quiet chordal patterns in
the harpsichord and the intense cantilena of the two violins (which begins, incidentally,
with a transposed version of the B-A-C-H motif, found in a large number of
Schnittke’s works). These three completely different thematic materials ‟fight it out”
for most of the movement. Then an intense polyphonic web of the strings (solo and
orchestra) takes over, until the bells, once again, put a halt to proceedings.
At the beginning of the fourth movement, the harpsichord plays the B-A-C-H
motif immediately followed by the motivically related C#-B#-E-D#, the theme the Csharp minor fugue from the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I. Another Bach homage
gone awry, it is a drawn-out plaintive song that finally (and once more, at the stroke of
the bell!) erupts in a desperate cadenza for the two solo violins in free meter, a shock
from which the movement never recovers.
In the final movement, the keyboard player switches to the celesta, whose
magical chords mix with the polytonal arpeggios of the strings (each orchestral player
has his or her own line). Later the two soloists enter with a subdued recollection of the
first movement’s ‟Brandenburg” material, now a distant memory that gradually fades
into silence .
~ Peter Laki