Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

["S.E.M. Ensemble" <>]

Title: Petr Kotík & Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra in Ostrava, Sept 3

Petr Kotík & Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra
Hana Kotková, Violin
Heldur Harry Polda and Voldemar Kants, Voices
Opening of the 2010/11 Concert Season in Ostrava

Join us for the opening concert of the 2010/11 season in Ostrava. The program includes young composer Rafael Nassif’s véus sobre cores (2007), Galina Ustwolskaja’s 1st Symphony (1955), Petr Kotik’s Fragment (1998), and Alban Berg’s Concert for Violin and Orchestra (1935).

WHEN: Friday, September 3 at 19:00
WHERE: Philharmonic Hall – Dům kultury města Ostravy

Rafael Nassif
véus sobre cores (2007), for orchestra

Galina Ustwolskaja
1st Symphony (1955), for two boy-sopranos and orchestra
with Heldur Harry Polda & Voldemar Kants, voices

Petr Kotik
Fragment (1998), for orchestra

Alban Berg
Concert for Violin and Orchestra (1935)
with Hana Kotková, violin

Info & Reservations: (718) 488-7659 / or http://www.semensemble.org

Rafael Nassif is a young composer from Brazil, currently studying in Stuttgart, Germany. Nassif has participated in several music festivals in Brazil and Europe, including 2nd Workshop for Young Composers in Dundaga Castle, Latvia, 2004, and Ostrava Days 2007 and 2009 in the Czech Republic. He received the Tinta Fresca 2008 prize, which included a large-orchestra commission for the Minas Gerais Philharmonic Orchestra. Very active as pianist and organizer of contemporary music events, Nassif coordinates the contemporary music festival eu gostaria de ouvir in Brazil. Nassif is interested primarily in choral and orchestral composition, and his research extends into instrumental techniques. His refined approach to timbre and space define the main elements of his latest compositions, including véus sobre cores (for symphony orchestra), os olhos são a luz do corpo (for three choirs and trombones), and refúgio (for guitar, flute and piano).
 
More than 90 years after her birth in Petrograd (presently Saint Petersburg), we can say that Galina Ivanovna Ustwolskaja (1919-2006) is the most ferocious and enigmatic Russian composer of the 20th century. Her music had no place in the official life of concerts and musical publications of the former Soviet Union. Her work remained unpublished for many years. A catalogue of her works, published in 1990 by Hanz Sikorski in Hamburg, contains 21 compositions.

Ustwolskaja’s 1st Symphony (1955) has a remarkable form: its two instrumental movements provide the framework for the central vocal part consisting of eight melodies sung by boy-sopranos. The texts are by the Italian poet Gianni Rodari, whose work concentrated on writing for and working with children. Following the traumas and of WWII, he joined the Italian Communist party. 1st Symphony was premiered 11 years after its creation. The work did not find favor with the Soviet establishment; it was not performed until the 1990s. The 1st Symphony occupies a unique place in Ustwolskaja’s oeuvre. It is her lengthiest score and illustrates the evolution of her musical language at a time when she decided to abandon post-Romantic heritage in favor of an ascetic expressionism more inspired by Stravinsky then Shostakovich, especially the former’s Symphony of Psalms. Ustwolskaja’s symphony of lamentation is a private playground for human misery and for innocent children, which reminds us of Dostoyevski’s protestation.

In 1997, Petr Kotík set out to compose a large-scale, one-movement composition for orchestra, but was distracted by other tasks, which interfered with his work, leading to ending the piece abruptly (hence the title Fragment). 300 measures, which were left unfinished, served as the basis of the next piece, Asymmetric Landing. Both pieces were united as two movements of a one hour-long composition, Music in Two Movements. They can be performed separately as individual pieces, or together as one two-movement composition.

Fragment was premiered on May 20, 1998 by The Orchestra of the S.E.M. Ensemble conducted by Petr Kotík, at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center. The New York critic, composer, and musicologist Kyle Gann wrote the following review of the piece:

Most of Kotik’s music is highly linear, but “Fragment” diffracted his usual lines of parallel fifths into pointillist dots of sonority. As always, the fifths allowed for splashes of noble consonance—including bits of American-sounding brass fanfares that seemed sampled from Copland—but also tense clashes of conflicting lines. Adagio and allegro penetrated each other; the basses would pound out a massive descending scale, then suddenly the clamor would vanish, leaving a plaintive trumpet duo, like a muted message of pain in an alien language…Nothing I’ve heard an orchestra do in years has been more original, more surprising, and more exquisitely etched at the same time.

Alban Berg (1885-1935) dedicated his Violin Concerto “To the Memory of an Angel,” Manon Gropius, the daughter of Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius. Manon died at the age of 18 in April 1935 while Berg was composing the concerto, commissioned by the American violinist Louis Krasner. The work on the Violin Concerto interrupted his work on the opera Lulu, which remained unfinished due to the composer’s untimely death in December 1935. Berg never heard the concerto performed; it was premiered by Krasner in 1936.

Berg is often called the most conservative member of the Second Viennese School (Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, and Anton Webern). However, this concerto, along with scores of other compositions, challenges this assertion. Looking at the piece from the current perspective, one cannot but admire the modernism of its content and form. Berg’s twelve-note row, based on major and minor triads with a fragment of a whole tone scale, creates harmonic ambiguities very much explored by composers of the late 20th century. Additionally, Berg quotes an Austrian folk tune and his use of Bach’s chorale “Es ist genug” (It is enough, Lord) from the Cantata O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, forms the basis of the finale’s variations. Rather than adopting the three movements favored by his contemporaries, Berg’s two-movement structure invokes a concept of scale, rather than form. These transformations and ambiguities—from dodecaphony to Bach’s chorale—make the music speak to many current compositional concerns.