NATIONAL CONCERT HALL
2024 — 2025 SEASON
INTERNATIONAL ORCHESTRAS AND RECITALS
SATURDAY 30
NOVEMBER 2024
7.30PM
PARAORCHESTRA
Charles Hazlewood conductor Victoria Oruwari soprano
The pioneering ensemble of disabled and non-disabled musicians, with guest soprano Victoria Oruwari, led by Charles Hazlewood perform Górecki’s cathartic and hauntingly beautiful work Symphony of Sorrowful Songs , preceded by Schubert’s Death and the Maiden, a melancholic, iridescent and urgent piece realised for full string orchestra by Mahler.
Pre-concert talk 6.15pm-7pm
Tickets from €15
Discounts and Packages Available nch.ie
Fáilte Welcome
We are delighted to welcome the Philip Glass Ensemble in Residence at the National Concert Hall as part of our 2024/2025 season, in which they perform two concerts entirely dedicated to the music of the renowned minimalist composer Philip Glass.
In the first of two concerts, the Philip Glass Ensemble showcase his innovative display of minimalism turned up to the max in his chamber piece Glassworks , alongside extracts from three of his mesmeric, ground-breaking operas featuring hypnotic portraits of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, in Akhnaten , Mahatma Gandhi’s ‘truth force’, in Satyagraha , and The Photographer Eadweard Muybridge.
In the second performance, Philip Glass associate Michael Riesman leads the National Symphony Orchestra with guest cellist Kate Ellis in the Irish premiere of a compelling new orchestral score from Glass’s stunning soundtrack for Godfrey Reggio’s 2002 film, Naqoyqatsi (‘life as war’). The live score will be played alongside a screening of the film. The piece was co-commissioned by Los Angeles Philharmonic, Barbican, London and the National Concert Hall.
Celebrating the work of great composers is a key feature of the NCH’s new season with music spanning the centuries, to include world and Irish premieres, celebration, gala and anniversary concerts, performed by some of the world’s leading ensembles, orchestras, conductors and soloists.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank The Department of Tourism, Arts, Gaeltacht, Heritage Sport and Media for their ongoing support and to our corporate supporters, Friends, Season Friends and Patrons for their loyalty and support which is very much appreciated.
Enjoy the performances and we look forward to welcoming back throughout the season to hear more great music at the NCH.
Robert Read Maura McGrath CEO Chairperson
Sun. 13 October 8pm AROOJ AFTAB
Thurs. 17 October 8pm MARCIN WASILEWSKI TRIO
Sun. 27 October 8pm
CHRISTEENE: THE LION THE WITCH AND THE COBRA
Sat. 23 November 8pm BLUE NOW A SPECIAL LIVE PERFORMANCE OF DEREK JARMAN’S FILM
Tickets from €15. Group Discounts available.
nch.ie
Programme
10 OCTOBER 2024
Philip Glass Ensemble
Michael Riesman music director
Philip Glass Glassworks
Philip Glass Rescue from Satyagraha
Funeral from Akhnaten
The Photographer, Act III
11 OCTOBER 2024
Philip Glass Ensemble
National Symphony Orchestra
Michael Riesman music director
Kate Ellis cello
Philip Glass Naqoyqatsi (Film Screening with live score) for Cello, Orchestra and the Philip Glass Ensemble by Philip Glass [Irish Premiere] Co-commissioned by Los Angeles Philharmonic, Barbican, London, and the National Concert Hall.
PLEASE NOTE: The NCH does not permit photography or videography during the performance (without prior permission). We kindly ask you to refrain from using any recording equipment for the duration of tonight’s performance.
NCH Board Members
Maura McGrath Chair | James Cavanagh | Cliona Doris
Rebecca Gageby | Hilary Hough | Peter McKenna
Niamh Murray | Michelle O’Sullivan | Don Thornhill
Patron
Michael D. Higgins President of Ireland
Philip Glass
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Philip Glass is a graduate of the University of Chicago and the Juilliard School. In the early 1960s, Glass spent two years of intensive study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and, while there, earned money by transcribing Ravi Shankar’s Indian music into Western notation. By 1974, Glass had a number of innovative projects creating a large collection of new music for The Philip Glass Ensemble and for the Mabou Mines Theater Company. This period culminated in Music in Twelve Parts and the landmark opera Einstein on the Beach for which he collaborated with Robert Wilson.
Since Einstein , Glass has expanded his repertoire to include music for opera, dance, theater, chamber ensemble, orchestra, and film. His film scores have received Academy Award nominations (Kundun , The Hours , Notes on a Scandal ) and a Golden Globe (The Truman Show ). Glass’s memoir Words Without Music was published by Liveright Books in 2015.
Glass received the Praemium Imperiale in 2012, the U.S. National Medal of the Arts from President Barack Obama in 2016, and 41st Kennedy Center Honors in 2018. Glass’s recent works include music for Errol Morris’ The Pigeon Tunnel cocomposed with Paul Leonard-Morgan, Symphony No. 13, Symphony No. 14 , and The Triumph of the Octagon for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Glass is currently writing his 15th symphony commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra.
Please note that Philip Glass will not be performing as part of this concert.
“THE PHILIP GLASS ENSEMBLE REPRESENTS THE MOST AUTHENTIC PERFORMANCE PRACTICE OF MY MUSIC IN OUR TIME.
I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO CHAMPIONING THEM AS THEY CARRY IT FORWARD AND BRING ITS UNIQUE REPERTOIRE TO NEW GENERATIONS”
Philip Glass
Philip Glass Ensemble
The Philip Glass Ensemble (PGE) comprises the principal performers of the music of Philip Glass. In 1968, Glass founded the PGE in New York City as a laboratory for his music. Its purpose was to develop a performance practice to meet the unprecedented technical and artistic demands of his compositions. In pioneering this approach, the PGE became a creative wellspring for Glass, and its members remain inimitable interpreters of his work.
The artists of the PGE recognize their unique position in the history of music of the past half-century, and passing on that legacy is part of their practice, with a deep dedication to educating the next generation of artists in the authentic practice of Philip Glass’ music.
The PGE debuted at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1969, and in its early years performed primarily in the galleries, artist lofts, and museums of SoHo’s then thriving artistic community. In the five decades since, the PGE has performed in world renowned music festivals and concert halls across five continents, and has made records with Sony, Nonesuch, and Orange Mountain Music. Many of Philip Glass’s most celebrated works were expressly composed for the PGE: its core concert pieces Music in Twelve Parts , Music in Similar Motion , and Music with Changing Parts ; the opera and musical theater projects Einstein on the Beach , Hydrogen Jukebox , 1000 Airplanes on the Roof, Monsters of Grace; and the full-length dance works Dance (Lucinda Childs) and A Descent Into the Maelström (Australian Dance Theater). The PGE is most widely acclaimed for its soundtracks to Godfrey Reggio’s trilogy of wordless films: Koyaanisqatsi , Powaqqatsi , and Naqoyqatsi. It is also featured in Glass’s operas La Belle et la Bête and The Photographer. In May, 2024, the PGE performed Music in Twelve Parts on the same stage in New York city where the piece was premiered exactly 50 years before.
Member and manager of the Philip Glass Ensemble, Andrew Sterman shares his own insights into the music of Philip Glass and his part in the Philip Glass Ensemble
‘I joined Philip Glass and the Ensemble back in 1992, for what I expected would be a brief engagement, one month of concerts in Spain, Portugal, and London. The music was specialized, of a very different musical world than what I was normally busy with in New York. It offered new challenges, technically and artistically, and seemed to be an experience worth having, one of many.
The music proved more unusual to perform than I expected, a fully new musical language that had its own practice and way of power. In so many kinds of music, we support as background here and step forward there. In Philip’s early music, a radically new aesthetic is in place: every part is equally important at all times. No one is to stand out. This is a totally different way of making music; it is sound as architecture. Everything is structural, and its power comes from how it is built. On my first tour, I was waking to this. Walking through a small airport in central Spain, I was chatting with Philip: “So… this music is architecture, it’s like a huge sculpture lowered in on a crane, all made in sound… its subject and its form are inseparable, its form IS the subject….” Philip threw his head back and laughed. “Exactly! That’s it!”
But that isn’t all of it. I decided to stay with the Ensemble, and Philip began tailoring my parts to my strengths and style. His art was in a state of constant evolution, and the next pieces merged the radical equality of the early work with ideas of accompaniment and solo, as Philip brought harmony and song form into his work, with his inimitable signature in everything he composes. From the minimalist architecture of the early period, a deeply expressive and humane music was emerging. On a bus, riding between concerts in South America we picked up a thread of conversation. “It’s so interesting, Philip…, where the press may say your music is minimalist, in fact you’ve cleared the table and rebuilt music for yourself that can be incredibly precise in its emotion. It’s as if all human experience were like a pie, and through opera and serious film scoring, you’ve developed a way to paint sustained and precise slivers of that expansive pie, very precise and small slivers, using materials that some call “simple”… just the absolutely perfect tempo, careful metrics, harmony, tones, all the bones of music. It’s so precise!” Philip’s response was quiet. “It’s taken a lifetime to be able to get to those slivers….”
IT’S AS IF ALL HUMAN EXPERIENCE WERE LIKE A PIE, AND THROUGH OPERA AND SERIOUS FILM SCORING, YOU’VE DEVELOPED A WAY TO PAINT SUSTAINED AND PRECISE SLIVERS OF THAT EXPANSIVE PIE…
PHILIP’S RESPONSE WAS QUIET.
“IT’S TAKEN A LIFETIME TO BE ABLE TO GET TO THOSE SLIVERS….”
The members of the Philip Glass Ensemble are each artists in their own right, as performers, composers, improvisors. Together, we meet and create Philip’s work in live form on stage. Our music is very well recorded, but the live performances outshine any possible recording. Philip’s work is uniquely powerful in concert. I sometimes feel that our concerts are similar to walking into the huge curved steel masterpieces of Philip’s lifelong friend, Richard Serra, structures that are massive, intriguingly shaped, astonishingly constructed, and for all their weight, powerfully uplifting. But for those, you need to visit a major museum, they are the opposite of mobile. The music of the Philip Glass Ensemble feels like sound art on that scale, massive, intriguingly shaped, astonishingly concentrated, and powerfully uplifting. We come to a city, load in our gear, carefully tune all of our sounds and setups, and offer the audience a deep and intricate sound world, a live performance of the structural excitement of the music of Philip Glass Ensemble’.
By Andrew Sterman, July 2024
Michael Riesman music director
Michael Riesman is a composer, conductor, keyboardist, record producer, and is the Music Director of the Philip Glass Ensemble. Riesman’s composition Formal Abandon, which originated from a commission by choreographer Lucinda Childs, has become a cult classic and can be found on Apple Music and other platforms. He recently released Re-Animated , a collaboration with immersive artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen. Another work, Flow, was also released last year. He has conducted and performed on many recordings of works by Glass, including most of his film soundtracks. He has recorded five albums of solo piano arrangements of Glass film music: The Hours , Dracula , Philip Glass Soundtracks , Beauty and the Beast, and Philip Glass Soundtracks Vol. II. He has conducted major ensembles including the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, and the Toronto, Sydney, and BBC Symphony Orchestras, and has appeared as a piano soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Milwaukee Symphony. He has conducted and performed on albums by Paul Simon (Hearts and Bones). David Bowie (Black Tie/ White Noise), and Mike Oldfield (Platinum).
Kate Ellis cello
Cellist Kate Ellis is dedicated to the performance and exploration of all things new in music with collaboration at the heart of that exploration. Kate is Artistic Director of Crash Ensemble, cellist with Martin Hayes’ Common Ground Ensemble and toured with Bono as part of his Stories of Surrender show.
Recent projects include the release of a major new work for solo cello by Northern Irish composer Ed Bennett on the Ergodos label, a duo collaboration with fiddle player Martin Hayes, curation of a contemporary music series ‘Europe: Here and Now’ at The National Concert Hall, Dublin, a residency at Sounds from a Safe Harbour festival and the creation of new music in collaboration with the Vernon Spring, Multi-Traction Orchestra and with UK and US based musicians as part of Brawl Records Echolocation project.
Kate has collaborated with, commissioned, premiered and recorded works by numerous Irish and International composers including Steve Reich, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Nico Muhly and Donnacha Dennehy and continues to push musical boundaries performing and recording with a diverse range of musicians including Bono and the Edge, Bobby McFerrin, Rhiannon Giddens, Martin Hayes, Ye Vagabonds, Laura Cannell, Iarla Ó Lionáird, Yurodny, Gavin Friday, Lisa O’Neill, Glen Hansard and Karan Casey.
Kate has toured and broadcast in Australia, the USA, Europe and China, performing at Carnegie Hall, the Barbican Centre, the Kennedy Centre, Shanghai EXPO, Istanbul Akbank Jazz Festival and Edinburgh International Festival with releases on Nonesuch, Cantaloupe, Rough Trade, Brawl Records, Bada Bing, Crash Records, Claddagh Records and Vertical Records and is published by Mute Song.
National Symphony Orchestra
Patron: Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland
The National Symphony Orchestra has been at the centre of Ireland’s cultural life for over 75 years. Formerly the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, it was founded in 1948 as the Raidió Éireann Symphony Orchestra. In 2022, the Orchestra transferred from RTÉ to the remit of the National Concert Hall.
Resident orchestra of the National Concert Hall since its opening in 1981, it is a leading force in Irish musical life through year-long programmes of live music –ranging from symphonic, choral and operatic to music from stage and screen, popular and traditional music, and new commissions – alongside recordings, broadcasts on RTÉ and internationally through the European Broadcasting Union. Schools’ concerts, family events, initiatives for emerging artists and composers, collaborations with partner promoters and organisations extend the orchestra’s reach.
As a central part of the National Concert Hall’s 2024-2025 Season, the NSO presents more than 55 performances shared between Dublin, Galway, Limerick, Waterford and Cork. They include collaborations with international and Irish artists, ensembles and conductors – including a number of events with the National Concert Hall’s Artists-in-Residence: the renowned American musician and composer Bryce Dessner, the internationally acclaimed Irish mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught, and the dynamic musician and presenter Jessie Grimes. The programme is rich and varied, presenting repertoire from across the centuries to the present-day including world and Irish premieres, choral masterpieces, birthday and anniversary celebrations, family concerts and screenings, schools’ concerts, and professional initiatives for emerging singers and composers. A focus on nature and the environment is a central part of the season’s programming.
Highlights with the Artists-in-Residence are many. They include three Irish premieres by Bryce Dessner: Mari , his Violin Concerto performed by its dedicatee, Pekka Kuusisto, and his Concerto for Two Pianos performed by Katia and Marielle Labèque, for whom it was written. Tara Erraught performs virtuosic works by Mozart, Haydn and Marianne von Martínez, with historical performance specialist Laurence Cummings conducting, and arias by Mozart, Puccini, Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini, with Clelia Cafiero conducting. Tara is also the driving
force behind Celebrating the Voice, a week-long professional development programme for young singers which culminates in an opera gala with the NSO conducted by Anu Tali. Jessie Grimes leads immersive, family-friendly concerts including Our Precious Planet and explorations of iconic works: Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique as part of the ASD-friendly Symphony Shorts, as well as Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, featuring new and specially commissioned shadow puppetry, and Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.
Other exciting highlights include Dame Sarah Connolly joining conductor Mihhail Gerts for Alma Mahler’s Six Songs; an 80th birthday celebration for conductor Leonard Slatkin which includes the world premiere of his son Daniel’s cosmic journey, Voyager 130 ; Hugh Tinney performing Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto; Speranza Scappucci conducting a Ravel Birthday Celebration; John Storgårds conducting Rachmaninov and Shostakovich; Anja Bihlmaier conducting Mahler’s Ninth Symphony; and Ryan McAdams conducting the First Violin Concerto by Philip Glass with NSO Leader Elaine Clark as soloist; and John Luther Adams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Become Ocean. Jaime Martín returns to conduct Chopin’s Second Concerto with Yeol Eum Son as the soloist, and former Principal Conductor Gerhard Markson returns for Stanford’s Requiem featuring the National Symphony Chorus and soloists including Máire Flavin and Sharon Carty.
World premieres by Deirdre McKay and Ailís Ní Ríain and, as part of Composer Lab, by Amelia Clarkson, Finola Merivale, Barry O’Halpin, and Yue Song all feature. Irish premieres include a new orchestral setting of Philip Glass’s film score Naqoyqatsi with the Philip Glass Ensemble; Stephen McNeff’s The Celestial Stranger with Gavan Ring as soloist; James MacMillan’s St. John Passion with the National Symphony Chorus and Chamber Choir Ireland; and Ukrainian Victoria Vita Polevá’s Third Symphony.
Additional family events include popular screenings of classic children’s stories by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler – Stick Man and The Snail and the Whale – and Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes . Music in the Classroom returns with Junior Cycle and Leaving Certificate Music Guide events, and Musical Adventures for Primary School children.
Programme Notes
THURSDAY 10 OCTOBER
Philip Glass (b.1937)
Glassworks
I. Opening
II. Floe
III. Island
IV. Rubric
V. Façades
VI. Closing
Few pieces of music with so deliberate a design and intention prove to be as successful creatively and commercially as Philip Glass’s punningly titled Glassworks . Dating from 1981 when Glass was already established among contemporary music’s cognoscenti, Glassworks was composed in response to a commission from CBS Records. In acceding to the request, Glass became the first composer since Aaron Copland – the ‘Dean of American composers’ – to be admitted to the label’s venerable Masterworks imprint.
Glassworks was written for the Philip Glass Ensemble, formed by the composer in 1968 to serve as both a laboratory and a proselytising platform for his music, and conceived, Glass later confessed, with the unabashed intention of introducing ‘my music to a more general audience than had been familiar with it up to then’. In that, he succeeded.
Deliberately cast in six digestible movements to contrast with his larger-form concert works and operas, not least Einstein on the Beach , his attentiongrabbing breakthrough in 1976, Glassworks was released in two versions: for long-playing vinyl and for cassette. That portable version, differently mixed for headphones rather than the home-listening environment of its LP sibling, was a calculated attempt to reach a younger audience then in thrall to the recently launched Sony Walkman cassette player that offered music-on-the-go.
The contrivance and particularity of that stratagem illustrates the central concern of Philip Glass’s music: the desire to communicate.
Originally conceived for permutations of twinned flutes and soprano and tenor saxophones with interspersed voices of piano, paired horns, bass clarinet, viola, cello and synthesizer, what resulted is marked by Glass’s signature complexity and intricacy. Those qualities are derived from an almost fetishistic concern with exploiting the mathematical relationships inherent in music. Glass’s distinguishing employment of sustained or contrasting tonal chords, pulsing rhythms and the mesmerising repetition of endlessly shifting note patterns sounds for all the world like being inside a constantly turning kaleidoscope where shapes and colours form and reform to mesmerising effect. It results in music that sounds as engineered as a purring, high-end car moving through the gears even while remaining wholly organic. Artifice made natural.
In truth, Glassworks occupies its own distinctive space, caught somewhere between the obligations of classical form, the freedom of jazz at its most individual and idiosyncratic, and the intoxicatingly unfettered energy of rock music at its most accessible.
Originally scored for solo piano, ‘Opening’ begins in an hypnotically tranquil mood, consonant and dissonant chords lightly washing up against each other in a gently rippling tidal flow. The movement ends with a whispered solo horn rising towards the sparkling ‘Floe’ that follows. It carries itself with animated excitement as if it were the soundtrack to a film being watched with the fastforward button held down, or an industrious swarm of bees busily constructing their hexacombed hives.
In contrast, ‘Island’ is noticeably more becalmed, as if the earlier close-up focus has been suddenly pulled back to a long-shot where the larger, panoramic scale seems to slow time and allow for gentler, more considered and poetic thoughts.
‘Rubric’ thrusts us back into the maelstrom of the hive with its constant churning of fractured short sequences as if a relentless incoming tide was breaking against rocky outcrops with a manic determination accelerating towards the more contemplative landscape of ‘Façades’. Here a solo saxophone offers a plaintive soliloquy above a shifting ensemble mass originally conceived, though
abandoned, as part of Glass’s soundtrack for the slow-motion, time-lapse sequences of the 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi , a word from the indigenous Hopi people of what is now modern-day Arizona, translating as ‘life out of balance’.
Glossed with warmer tones, ‘Closing’ reprises Glassworks ’ ‘Opening’ to bring things, in characteristic Glass fashion, full circle. Its glinting, fluid piano flows like a stream finally finding its true course, certain in itself and sure of its direction in a most beautiful and becoming conclusion to a long and eventful journey.
Philip Glass (b.1937)
Excerpts from Satyagraha , Akhnaten and The Photographer
I ‘Rescue’ from Satyagraha
II ‘Funeral of Amenhotep III’ from Akhnaten III Act III from The Photographer
No contemporary opera composer has been so prolific, or so idiosyncratic, as Philip Glass, whose tally of works for the stage numbers more than two dozen transformative pieces. Seven of those, including his first opera, 1976’s Einstein on the Beach , which dealt with the life of the iconic theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein, have been portraits of famous figures.
Among historic names who have been placed under the spotlight by Glass have been two other scientists – the astronomers Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler – and the animated film pioneer Walt Disney, albeit glancingly so, the point of reference a novel by Peter Stephan Jungk which cast The Perfect American in a decidedly less flattering guise.
Einstein on the Beach proved to be the first in a trilogy of portrait operas that included 1980’s Satyagraha , loosely based on the life of Mahatma Gandhi, and 1983’s Akhnaten where the subject was the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep IV. Separately dealing with matters of science, politics and religions, they portrayed icons driven by an inner vision that changed the world they lived in.
In between, in 1982, came the chamber-sized opera The Photographer exploring the scandal-filled life and homicide trial of the 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge.
With a text derived from the Bhagavad Gita, a revered Hindu scripture, Satyagraha – a Sanskrit word meaning ‘truth force’ – honed in on Gandhi’s early years in South Africa where he developed the notion of non-violence as a political tool against the Apartheid regime that would later also be instrumental in securing India’s independence from the dying British Empire.
Overseen by the guardian spirit of Gandhi’s contemporary, the Indian poet and activist Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Rescue’ comes from the opening scene of the opera’s Second Act in which Gandhi, newly returned to South Africa, finds himself the focal point of a baying crowd of white European settlers fuelled by anti-Indian resentment.
As he embarks from the ship he has arrived on to walk to his place of lodging, Gandhi is surrounded and rescued only by the arrival of the police superintendent’s wife, Mrs. Alexander, who intervenes to escort him to safety. Against a swirling, surging swell of mechanistically repeated musical figures boiling towards violence, Alexander berates the crowd only to meet with the most unsympathetic of rebukes. The moment finds Glass at his most abrasively direct and dramatic.
Akhnaten casts its view back to ancient Egypt and the pharaoh of that name who controversially abandoned traditional adherence to multiple gods in favour of a new orthodoxy worshipping just one. Failing where Judaism, Christianity and Islam would later succeed in asserting a monotheistic religion, Akhnaten was to be the last of his dynasty, his outraged followers overthrowing him, destroying his monuments and all but removing his name from history, not to be recovered until the late 19th century.
Cast as a series of tableaux, it draws on ancient languages including the Egyptian funeral rite, the Book of the Dead, and is sung in Egyptian, Biblical Hebrew, Akkadian from ancient Mesopotamia, and the native language of the producing house.
The opera begins with a lengthy Prelude driven by powerful rhythmic and metrical pulses building in intensity until hammering percussion announce the ‘Funeral of Amenhotep III’, Akhnaten’s father; a scene of high ritual in which the deceased’s body is consigned to the afterlife and allegiance pledged to his successor son.
How best to evoke this exotic world was, Glass admits, a challenge. ‘Musically speaking, I was clearly on my own, since the only hints we have of how Egyptian music sounded comes from pictures of lutes, lyres, and so forth found in tombs.’
‘To judge from that evidence, Egyptian music was soft, lyrical stuff. About funeral music, no mention is made at all. Thus, the music I designed for the funeral of Amenhotep III in the opening scene of the opera does not resemble any funeral music I have ever heard before. The drumming that begins it, the flourishes for brass and winds and the emphatic entrance of the singing, give it a raw, primitive, quasi-military sound.’
Glass adds: ‘In this music… my idea was to give an unmistakable and clear image of how, at least in part, “our” Egypt would be portrayed. By vividly portraying that world through the music, I hoped to set off the idealism of Akhnaten even more strongly. The blaring brass and pounding drums introduce the world into which Akhnaten was born’.
With a libretto by David Byrne – then best known as lead figure of New Wave band Talking Heads, later to win an Academy Award for his score for Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 film, The Last Emperor – in 1982 Glass turned his attention to the turbulent life of The Photographer, Eadweard Muybridge. In mid-life, Muybridge’s fame was overtaken by notoriety when he was tried for the murder of his wife’s lover, a charge on which he was acquitted on grounds of justifiable homicide.
The pioneering motion studies of people and animals that made the 19thcentury Englishman famous later influenced artists including Marcel Duchamp and Francis Bacon and inspired the creation of the distinctive ‘bullet time’ slowmotion technique in the cult 1999 film The Matrix.
Indeed, his photographic technique – single images multiply repeated to form something more than the sum of their parts – aptly mirrors the simple, repetitive structures of Glass’s music that coalesce into a larger whole.
Owing more to music-theatre than to opera, The Photographer was conceived in three Acts: the first a play with incidental music recounting the circumstances that led to Muybridge’s violence, his subsequent trial and acquittal; the second a virtual concert accompanied by a slide show of Muybridge’s photographs; the third a ballet involving all the characters.
Glass has described the development of the work as being ‘from a melodramatic series of events [that] became increasingly abstract… and also going from words to music’.
Act III articulates those notions with intricately elaborate eloquence, its gyrating, pirouetting melodies creating a churning kaleidoscope of patterns, its pulsating rhythms sparking with a strange, other-worldly-sounding eccentricity that even so communicates on the most direct and visceral level. In its thrillingly imposing finale bordering on the ostentatious, it unabashedly delivers what some would deny Glass’s music: pure, unfettered emotion.
Notes by Michael Quinn © 2024
Programme Notes
Friday 11 October
Philip Glass (b.1937)
Naqoyqatsi for Cello, Orchestra and the Philip Glass Ensemble by Philip Glass [Irish Premiere]
The National Concert Hall Dublin has commissioned the premiere of the full orchestral version of Naqoyqatsi Live to Film, performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble and Orchestra. It is with great pleasure to bring the Irish premiere to the National Concert Hall, where the Philip Glass Ensemble and I last performed in 2019. This evening you will hear the last of three films in the Qatsi trilogy - Naqoyqatsi (2002). This work evokes a unique experience between the image, the music, and the viewer. Godfrey Reggio and I welcome you to this presentation of Naqoyqatsi Live to Film in its fullest form at NCH.
- Philip Glass, March 2024
The Making of the Qatsi Trilogy
In 1975, Godfrey Reggio, a man who had spent 14 years in silence and prayer as a member of a contemplative religious order and then devoted his life to community service, latched onto an idea for a film that would create an entirely new motion picture style. His idea was to grab images from real life - emotional, raw, honest images - and present them in a non-verbal, non-linear fashion, forging a kind of concert cinema.
Seven years later, Reggio’s first film, Koyaanisqatsi was released to critical acclaim. The film’s Hopi-language title translates roughly as ‘Life Out of Balance,’ and this was Reggio’s simple but searing theme as the film unveiled a vision of an urban society moving at a frenetic pace, detached from the natural environment and overwhelmed by technology. In images at once stark and beautiful, assaulting and hypnotizing, the film worked as a kind of visual aperitif to conversations that could last for days or weeks. During filmmaking, Reggio had invited the daring experimental composer Philip Glass to create a score for Koyaanisqatsi that was also to have a great influence on the film’s reception –
and to spark a continuing collaboration between the two artists. Glass became an integral part of the film’s creation, sitting in on editing sessions to help meld his trademark syncopated rhythms and rapid arpeggios to the images seamlessly.
The film won passionate fans around the world, including Francis Ford Coppola, who lent his name to the film as a presenter. In the 1980s, Koyaanisqatsi joined A Clockwork Orange and Eraserhead at the top of rentals on U.S. college campuses. When broadcast on PBS’ Great Performances it drew the secondhighest over-night rating in the history of the series. The film is also part of the permanent collections of seven international art institutions including The National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, The Museum of Modern Art and the British Film Institute. The artistic influence of Reggio’s style has also been seen extensively in music videos, motion picture cinematography and effects and the IMAX film phenomenon.
Fellow filmmaker George Lucas joined Francis Ford Coppola in presenting the second film in the Qatsi series: Powaqqatsi , which translates to ‘Life in Transformation.’ For this new film, Reggio chose to go out into the world, into parts of developing nations rarely seen on screen in any format and capture the impact of technological progress on native cultures. Over six months, he and his crew journeyed to twelve countries, including India, Egypt, Brazil, Peru, Kenya, Nepal and Nigeria, capturing ordinary people at work and play and revealing their complicated relationship with such new additions to their lives as cars and high-rises. The film drew a wide range of critical and even political responsesattesting to its ability to touch audiences strongly. In Europe, the film received the 1988 Leonardo de Vinci Award for Best Film and Best Musical Score.
Since their initial release, Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi have been in theatrical release in over 60 countries, televised and on home video in over 30 countries, invited to over 70 worldwide film festivals and performed live with the Philip Glass Ensemble. The films have been seen by over 35 million people worldwide. Each of the Qatsi films have utilized their own unique style: Koyaanisqatsi used time-lapse photography to bend the mind around its images, while Powaqqatsi turned to slow motion to focus on the visceral details of native life. With Naqoyqatsi the series again enters new visual territory, delving into images of advanced technology and digital manipulation with what Godfrey Reggio terms a “reanimated look.” Unlike the previous two films, Naqoyqatsi features little location work, but instead uses a method described by Godfrey Reggio as “image as location.” © MIRAMAX FILM
NAQOYQATSI: LIFE AS WAR
“The Qatsi Trilogy —an extended collaboration between filmmaker Godfrey Reggio and myself—began with Koyaanisqatsi in ‘81, continued with Powaqqatsi in ‘88 and finally completed with Naqoyqatsi in 2001. It presents a cohesive and poetic vision of the modern world as it rockets toward the end of the 20th century and, in its last moments, anticipates the century to come. Each of the films is set within a unique visual and musical language. No text or actors are included. It’s to Godfrey’s credit that he manages to leave us with enduring, powerful images and a picture of our world, at times both frightening and profoundly compelling. The message of the film in its clarity and vividness is not meant to simply explain but, in its most contemplative aspect, to question and inspire.” - Philip Glass
NA-QOY-QATSI: (nah koy’ kahtsee) N. From the Hopi Language. <eachother-kill many-life> 1. A life of killing each other. 2. War as a way of life. 3. (Interpreted) Civilized violence.
The third and final feature film in The Qatsi Trilogy, Naqoyqatsi merges the power of image and music to plunge into the heart of the hyper-accelerated, globally wired 21st century. Mesmerizing images plucked from everyday reality, then visually altered with state-of-the art digital techniques, chronicle the shift from a world organized by the principles of nature to one dominated by technology, the synthetic and the virtual. Extremes of intimacy and spectacle, tragedy and hope fuse in a tidal wave of visuals and music, giving rise to a unique, artistic experience that reflects Reggio’s vision of a brave new globalized world.
As the completion of the Qatsi trilogy, Naqoyqatsi offers a cinematic concert to experience the allurement, seduction and sanctioned terror of ordinary daily living - a world at war beyond the battlefield, a conflagration between old and new nature - total war. The vision of Naqoyqatsi is a world made in the image and likeness of the new divine, the computer - a world where unity is held in the vice of technological homogenization, the globalized world of technofascism, the age of civilized violence.
“It must be noted that the production of Naqoyqatsi employs the very medium that it questions. In doing so, we embrace the contradiction of using technology to question technology. Given the intention of the film is to commune, to connect, we employ the franca lingua of the technological order - what Baudrillard terms ‘the evil demon of images’. The image becomes our location. We relocate onto the image, onto our venerated familiar, the iconic, as we
reshuffle the deck to offer an iconoclastic experience in the form of a film. Indeed, the subject of Naqoyqatsi is itself the manufactured image, a horizonless digital landscape, devoid of reality yet full of promise. The tools that produced the film are themselves our subject.” – Godfrey Reggio
THE PHILIP GLASS ENSEMBLE
Michael Riesman music director, keyboard
Lisa Bielawa voice, keyboard
Dan Bora sound
Peter Hess alto and tenor saxophone
Ryan Kelly onstage sound
Mick Rossi keyboard
Sam Sadigursky soprano saxophone, flute
Andrew Sterman flute, piccolo, soprano saxophone
Production Manager, Michael Amacio
The Philip Glass Ensemble is the authoritative performer of its repertoire. By special arrangement with Philip Glass and Dunvagen Music Publishers, Inc. Please note that Philip Glass will not be performing as part of this concert.
National Symphony Orchestra
1st Violin
Elaine Clark •
Thomas Jackson
Sebastian Liebig †
Orla Ní Bhraoin °
Catherine McCarthy
Ting Zhong Deng
David Clark
Anne Harte
Bróna Fitzgerald
Sylvia Roberts
Claudie Driesen
Karl Sweeney
Hannah Choi
Nasenbilige Ta
2nd Violin
Elizabeth McLaren ‡
Oonagh Keogh
Steven Crichlow
Rosalind Brown
Paul Fanning
Dara O’Connell
Melanie Cull
Evelyn McGrory
Elena Quinn
Magda Kowalska
Matthew Wylie
Jisun Min
Viola
Steven Burnard
Francis Harte °
Ruth Bebb
Neil Martin
Cliona O’Riordan
Nathan Sherman
Anthony Mulholland
Alison Comerford
Carla Vedres
Aoife Magee
Cello
Martin Johnson •
Polly Ballard ‡
Violetta-Valerie Muth °
Úna Ní Chanainn
Filip Szkopek
Maria Kolby-Sonstad
David McCann
Sheelagh Harte
Double Bass
Pete Fry
Roger McCann
Gareth Hopkins
Waldemar Kozak
Helen Morgan
Jenni Meade
Anthony Williams
Horn
Felix Peijnenborgh
Peter Ryan
Bethan Watkeys †
David Atcheler ◊
Trumpet
Pamela Stainer
Niall O’Sullivan
Jonathan Corry
Aoife Garry
Trombone
Jason Sinclair •
Gavin Roche ‡
Bass Trombone
Josiah Walters †
Tuba
Francis Magee •
Timpani
Niels Verbeek
Percussion
Rebecca Celebuski
Bernard Reilly ◊
Richard O’Donnell
Brian Dungan
Ronan McKee
• Section Leader
* Section Principal
† Principal
‡ Associate Principal
° String Sub Principal
◊ Sub Principal 1
WHERE CONCERTS MAKE CONNECTIONS
Behind the Scenes Tour of the National Concert Hall
Explore the History and Legacy of Ireland’s Cultural Icon
From backstage areas to architectural details rarely seen by the public, this tour offers a unique opportunity to delve into the hidden corners and history of a building that has hosted some of Ireland’s greatest performances.
25 OCTOBER 2024
22 NOVEMBER 2024
10.30am
Tickets: €10
Spaces are limited
Booking advised
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THANK YOU TO OUR CORPORATE AND INDIVIDUAL SUPPORTERS
We would like to acknowledge with appreciation and gratitude the generous support of our Corporate Partners, Corporate Members, Patrons, John Field Society Members and Friends.
PROGRAMME PARTNERS
TRUST & FOUNDATION PARTNERS
CORPORATE MEMBERS
OVATION
ENCORE
APPLAUSE
PATRONS & JOHN FIELD SOCIETY MEMBERS
Frank & Ivy Bannister • William Barton • James Billet • Michael Bourke • Sharon Burke Brid Cannon & Juan Pablo Cortes Ocampo • Dr Tom Carey • Dorothy Clements • Bernadette Coggins Louis & Mary Fitzgerald • Dr Crona Gallagher & Jim Clery • Brian Kingham • Mary Mac Aodha • Brian Mc Elroy Sinead Nic Oireachtaigh • Prof Deirdre O Grady • Tiernan O hAlmhain • Dr Rachel Patton John Pollard Foundation • Beverly Sperry • Kieran Tobin • Dr Peter & Elva Wyatt
FRIENDS, SEASON FRIENDS AND SUPPORTING FRIENDS
Please get in touch with a member of the Partnerships & Philanthropy Team to learn more and find out how you can support your National Concert Hall today:
Aisling Kennedy Corporate Development Executive aisling.kennedy@nch.ie
#SupportYourNCH RCN. 200011987
Emmet McSwiney Individual Giving Executive emmet.mcswiney@nch.ie
NATIONAL CONCERT HALL
2024 — 2025 SEASON
ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE
BRYCE DESSNER
FRIDAY 15 NOVEMBER 2024, 7.30pm
National Symphony Orchestra
André de Ridder conductor
Pekka Kuusisto violin
‘A FANTASTICALLY EXCITING VIOLINIST’ (Pekka Kuusisto) The Times
Bryce Dessner Mari (Irish Premiere)
Bryce Dessner Violin Concerto (Irish Premiere)
Dvorˇák Symphony No. 7
Post-concert talk and performance
Bryce Dessner, André de Ridder and Pekka Kuusisto in conversation with John Kelly. Includes a performance by Pekka Kuusisto of solo violin music by Dessner.
Book now on nch.ie Tickets from €15