NCH Chamber Music Series 2018/2019 The Studio
TRAILBLAZERS Thursday 7 February, 7:30 pm Concorde Jane O’Leary director/piano/conductor Dermot Dunne accordion/conductor Madeleine Staunton flute/alto flute Paul Roe clarinet/bass clarinet Elaine Clark violin Martin Johnson cello
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Programme Thea Musgrave b. 1928 Scotland/USA Orfeo I (1975) flute and tape 13’ tape produced by the BBC, performed by James Galway Sofia Gubaidulina b. 1931 Russia/Germany De profundis (1978) accordion solo 9’ Marta Ptaszynska b. 1943 Poland/USA Moon Flowers (1986) cello & piano 10’ Jane O’Leary b. 1946 USA/Ireland between 2 waves of the sea (2016) ‘Sea’ images by Gwen O’Dowd flute, clarinet, accordion, violin, cello 8’ INTERVAL Nicola LeFanu b. 1947 UK Isobirthday (2002) flute & clarinet 4’ Kaija Saariaho b. 1952 Finland/France Cendres (1998) alto flute, piano, cello 10’ Unsuk Chin b. 1961 Korea/Germany Alice in Wonderland - Advice from a caterpillar (2007) bass clarinet solo 8’ Joan Tower b. 1938 USA Amazon I (1977) flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano 13’
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Programme Notes
Musgrave has consistently explored new means of projecting essentially dramatic situations in her music. Orfeo is one of her early works which explores dramatic territory. It is intended as a simple retelling of the famous legend, with the flute representing Orfeo.
Trailblazers Tonight’s programme features music by women who started on the path of a professional composer in the mid to late 20th century - women who persevered, followed their dreams, created some amazing music which has survived the test of time, and who are now still active writing, teaching, performing, promoting - and creating new music.
The whole work is focussed on Orfeo: on his mourning for Euridice and his vain attempts to recover her. In the end he has to resign himself to her loss. Orfeo was first performed in Ireland by Madeleine Staunton at a concert presented by Concorde in the Hugh Lane Gallery in 1986.
From Thea Musgrave, who celebrated her 90th birthday last year, to Unsuk Chin (featured at last year’s New Music Dublin festival), who will be 58 this year, each of today’s artists speaks with a distinctly individual and personal voice. Musgrave featured frequently in the programmes of Concorde’s first decade. Her ‘Orfeo’ premiered in 1976, the same year that Concorde made its debut in Ireland, while the most recent piece by Jane O’Leary, written for Concorde’s 40th anniversary, was premiered in Dublin in 2016.
Sofia Gubaidulina: De profundis (1978) Gubaidulina was born in the Tartar Republic of the Soviet Union, pursuing studies in composition at the Moscow Conservatory. She lived in Moscow until 1992, and since then has made her home in Germany, outside Hamburg. Her compositional interests have been stimulated by improvisation and exploration with rare Russian, Caucasian and Asian folk instruments; while living in Moscow she was co-founder of the ‘Astreja’ ensemble, and her music often explores unconventional techniques of sound production. In writing De profundis she worked closely with the performer Friedrich Lips, who premiered it in Moscow in 1980.
Thea Musgrave: Orfeo I (1975) This work was originally commissioned by the BBC for James Galway, as a work for solo flute and tape. All the music on the tape is an electronically treated recording of James Galway playing a variety of different flutes.
Gubaidulina regards religion as the most important thing in every human life, and describes the act of creation as a process of ‘fantasising on a different level in the spheres of my inner being, my spirit.’
Musgrave was born in Edinburgh, and following studies at the University of Edinburgh she spent four years as a pupil of Nadia Boulanger at the Paris Conservatoire. After she was appointed Guest Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, she became increasingly involved with the musical life of the U.S. and has resided there since 1972.
De profundis refers to the opening of Psalm 130 - “Out of the depths [I call to Thee, O Lord]." The music begins in the instrument's lowest register and slowly ascends to its bright top notes. Various textures are used, from a chorale idea that represents hope, to a long single-line melody suggesting prayer. Unusual techniques are also used, from glissandi, shuddering vibratos and the sighing sound of the instrument's bellows.
Thea Musgrave is frequently interviewed and questioned about being a "woman" composer, to which she has replied; "Yes, I am a woman; and I am a composer. But rarely at the same time."
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she is a founding member of Aosdana. She has been composer in residence at the RIAM and lectured in composition at the DIT Conservatory of Music from 2006 - 2012. In 1976 she founded Concorde and has remained the director and pianist for over 42 years.
De profundis was first performed in Ireland by Dermot Dunne when he returned to Ireland from his studies in Kiev, in a series of concerts presented by Concorde in January 1999, taking place in Galway, Cork and Dublin. Marta Ptaszynska: Moon Flowers (1986)
Composed for Concorde in celebration of the group’s 40th Anniversary in 2016, this quintet is in one continuous movement. The music ebbs and flows, with the accordion shaping clusters of notes which are echoed with fragmentary gestures in the other instrumental parts. The title, from TS Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’ captures the illusive nature of music, existing somewhere between the past and the future.
Born in Warsaw, Ptaszynska began her composition studies at the Academies of Music in Warsaw and Poznan. She also worked privately with Witold Lutoslawski, who later became her mentor, and at the Paris Conservatoire with Nadia Boulanger. In 1974 she completed a Degree in Percussion Performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and was appointed Professor of Music at the University of Chicago in 1998. She is widely acclaimed as a virtuoso percussionist, and her work for two percussionists, Mobile, was introduced to Irish audiences by Concorde in January 2008 at the National Gallery of Ireland.
“At the source of the longest river The voice of the hidden waterfall And the children in the apple-tree Not known, because not looked for But heard, half-heard in the stillness Between two waves of the sea.” Nicola LeFanu: Isobirthday (2002)
Moon Flowers was completed on January 28, 1986 at 11:39 a.m. (New York time). The composer was surprised to discover that at this very moment the space shuttle ''Challenger'' was blown up in the sky, and dedicated the music to the memory of the seven late astronauts.
Nicola LeFanu was born in England, but enjoys an Irish heritage through both of her parents. In addition to composing, she has enjoyed teaching composition in England, Australia, and the U.S., having been Professor of Music at the University of York from 1994 - 2008. She has been deeply involved in Irish musical activities, as a Course Director of the Irish Composition Summer School for many years and in encouraging young Irish performers to complete advanced composition studies with the support of the Elizabeth Maconchy Fellowship. Concorde have consistently commissioned and performed her works over many years.
Ptaszynska strongly associates music with colour and specifically with paintings, and the inspiration for this duo came from the paintings of the French symbolist artist Odilon Redon, who created fantasy worlds of strange flowers and mysterious men in the moon. It was the visionary, dream-like quality of his art that fascinated her; the title ‘Moon Flowers’ is taken from one of his paintings. Jane O’Leary: between two waves of the sea (2016) ‘Sea’ images by Gwen O’Dowd
In 2009 she reflected on the topic of women composers, something she has always felt passionately about: ‘The history of women in music is a cyclic one; each generation feels that there is no longer a problem, yet a glance at the status quo shows us that this is not the case.’
Jane O’Leary grew up in Connecticut, and studied composition at Vassar College and Princeton University. Since moving to Ireland in 1972, she has been active in performing, composing, teaching and promoting music; 3
In 2007 her first opera, Alice in Wonderland, was given its world premiere at the Bavarian State Opera. This production was named ‘World Premiere of the Year’ and has since received many stagings. Extracted from the opera, this little interlude is for solo bass clarinet. The Caterpillar sits on a huge mushroom, with a bass clarinet. Alice enters. They look at each other for some time in silence. Then, the Caterpillar begins to “speak”. His lines are projected as text.
Isobirthday was commissioned to celebrate the 80th birthday of composer Jim Wilson in 2002 and premiered by Concorde in the Hugh Lane Gallery. It is dedicated to him with affection. A sixteen-note melody appears five times, gradually contracting and expanding as it goes. It lies in the clarinet at first, with the flute playing calls and flourishes in an independent tempo. Later, the roles are reversed. Kaija Saariaho: Cendres (1998)
Joan Tower: Amazon I (1977)
Born in Helsinki, Saariaho studied at the Sibelius Academy there and founded the progressive ‘Ears Open’ group. She continued her studies in Freiburg and Darmstadt, and from 1982 at the IRCAM research institute in Paris, where she has made her home ever since. At IRCAM she was able to develop a fluency in working on tape and with live electronics, and her music is noted for its preoccupation with colour and texture as well as a detailed continuum of sound extending from pure tone to unpitched noise.
Born in New York State, Joan Tower is recognised as one of the most important American composers living today. She studied at Bennington College and Columbia University, and in 1969 formed the Da Capo Chamber Players, with whom she was pianist until 1984. She is Professor of Music at Bard College, where she has taught since 1972. Amazon was written for the Da Capo Players, and reflects on her experiences growing up in South America. The title refers to the great Brazilian river, and the images and actions that a journey on such a river might provide. She speaks of creating ‘a kind of seamless, flowing action within which, along the way, one might sense changes of pace.’ Some different kinds of associations with the river will be heard in trill passages (ripples of water), cascades of many notes, and fast unison passages which have the effect of a waterfall and water turbulence.
She describes the relationship between alto flute, piano and cello in Cendres as a musical tension ‘created by sometimes bringing the instruments as close together as possible in all compositional aspects (such as pitch, rhythm, dynamics, articulation, colour), sometimes letting each of them express the music in their own most idiomatic way. In between these extremes one can find an unlimited number of possibilities to create more or less homogenic musical situations. The awareness of this variety was the rope on which I was balancing when working on the piece.’
Fittingly for tonight’s programme, Tower also states that ’the other reason I chose ‘amazon’ as a title was the fact that I was reading many books by and about women at the time, and I liked the feminist connotation of the title. I have never actually seen the Amazon river.’
Unsuk Chin: Advice from a caterpillar (2007) Unsuk Chin was born in Seoul, South Korea, and studied composition at the Seoul National University. In 1985 she won first prize of the Gaudeamus Foundation in Amsterdam and moved to Europe that year to begin studies in Germany. Following studies with Ligeti in Hamburg, she has lived in Berlin since 1988. She describes her approach to composition as moving towards a more abstract ‘fantasy of sound colours.’
Tower’s Amazon was given its Irish premiere in February 1996 by Concorde in the Hugh Lane Gallery.
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Biography Concorde Established in 1976 to fill a gap in opportunities in Ireland for listening to new music, Concorde was Ireland’s first new music ensemble, and continues to nurture the creation of new work in collaboration with composers, promoters and listeners. Concorde has presented new music at well over 350 public concerts, including some fifty concerts throughout Europe, in the USA and Hong Kong. Over 250 world premieres have been given and more than 100 Irish composers are represented in Concorde’s performances. In 2018 Concorde presented a programme of Irish music at Denmark’s oldest festival of contemporary music - Susaa Festival, were featured in performances of new commissions at a celebration of Debussy in Paris, and premiered a new work by Ed Bennett at New Music Dublin (Defrosted). Concorde is ensemble-in-residence at TU Dublin Conservatory of Music. Concorde’s early CDs featured music by Jane O’Leary, Hilary Tann and Nicola LeFanu, as well as Deirdre Gribbin and Grainne Mulvey. In 2010 their CD Reflections was released with Navona and included music by Judith Ring, Si-Hyun Yi, and Jane O’Leary. Concorde’s recordings of works by Judith Ring appear on What Was (Ergodos) and by Jane O’Leary on The Passing Sound of Forever (Navona). In 2018 Mark Fitzgerald did a study of Irish ensembles in relation to performances of music by female composers, and noted that Concorde ‘leads the way in terms of providing equal opportunities for composers….Out of more than 900 performances of works by Irish composers, approximately 45% have been compositions by female composers. Over the last twenty years, the ensemble has premiered approximately 117 compositions by Irish and international composers and given 64 paid commissions, and in both cases 45% were by female composers.’ Next concert in this series: Irish Baroque Orchestra Thursday 7 March
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