Notes on the Program
Joseph Schwantner was born in Chicago in 1943, and is Music Professor of Composition at the Yale School of Music, having previously served on the faculties of the the Juilliard School and the Eastman School of Music. Schwantner received his musical and academic training at the Chicago conservatory and Northwestern University, completing a doctorate in 1968.
From 1982 to 1985, Schwantner served as Composer-in-Residence with the Saint Louis Symphony orchestra as part of the Meet the Composer/Orchestra Residencies Program funded by the Exxon Corporation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has been the subject of a television documentary entitled Soundings, produced by WGBH in Boston for national broadcast. His work, Magabunda "Four Poems of Agueda Pizarro," recorded on Nonesuch Records by the St. Louis Symphony, was nominated for a 1985 Grammy Award in the category "Best New Classical Composition," and his A Sudden Rainbow, also recorded on Nonesuch by the St. Louis Symphony, received a 1987 Grammy nomination for "Best Classical Composition."
Schwantner's music has been performed extensively throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, Canada and Mexico, as well as at the Holland, Ravinia, Adelaide, Bydgoszcz, Bracknell and TideWater Music Festivals, the 1978 ISCM World Music Days held in Helsinki, the 1981 World Music Days in Brussels and the Horizons '83 Festival of Contemporary Music sponsored by the New York Philharmonic, the 1988 New York International Festival of the Arts, and the Bowdoin Summer Music Festival 1990.
Among his commissions are those from the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, the First New York International Festival of the Arts, The Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, Meet the Composer: Composer / Choreographer Project Commission, Fromm Music Foundation, Naumburg Foundation, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, American Composers Concerts Inc., American Heritage Foundation, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Canton Symphony, Solisti New York and the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.
His orchestral works have been extensively performed by major orchestras around the world. His orchestral work Aftertones of Infinity received the Pulitzer Prize in 1979. Other awards include First Prize in the Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards 1981 for Music of Amber and Third Prize 1986 for A Sudden Rainbow; Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, 1978; Consortium Commissioning Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, 1974, 1977, 1979 and 1988; Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation Grant, 1978; ISCM Composers Competition, 1978 and 1980; CAPS Grants, 1975 and 1977; Fairchild Award, 1985; first recipient of the Charles Ives Scholarship presented by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1970; Bearns Prize, 1967; and BMI Student Composer Awards, 1965, 1966 and 1968.
The composer has provided the following program note:
Wind, Willow, Whisper. . . ., completed in January, 1980, on a commission by the Fromm Foundation, was written for and is dedicated to the members of the Da Capo Chamber Players for their 10th Anniversary Concert. As is the case with several of my works, the title is drawn from a brief poem written to function as a poetic backdrop, acting in resonance with the sonic landscape of the work:
Wind Willow, Whisper....
a gentle breeze
the early morning mist
dew on languid leaves,
sweet birds sing
in exultation,
a celebration....
Cast in a single, continuous movement, the entire work unfolds and develops all from the initial musical material presented in the opening measures.
Aaron Jay Kernis, one of the youngest composers ever to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize, IS among the most esteemed musical figures of his generation. Each work of Kernis bears the unmistakable stamp of a wildly fertile musical imagination and a distinctive voice forged out of the wide-ranging musical languages of the 1980s and 1990s. His music bursts with rich poetic imagery, brilliant instrumental color, distinctive musical wit, and infectious exuberance. His work is as likely to be inspired by the horrors of the Persian Gulf War (as in the much-talked about Symphony No. 2) as the love poems of Anna Swir (Love Scenes); the earthy rhythms of Salsa (100 Greatest Dance Hits) as the antics of a child (Before Sleep and Dreams); the surrealism of Gertrude Stein (Fragments of Gertrude Stein) as the complexities and high craftsmanship of Italian mosaics (Invisible Mosaic III)
Kernis' music figures prominently on orchestral, chamber, and recital programs around the world. He has already written works for many of America's foremost musical institutions, including New Era Dance, commissioned for the 150th Anniversary of the New York Philharmonic and recorded by the Baltimore Symphony; Still Movement with Hymn, a piano quartet commissioned by American Public Radio for Christopher O'Riley, Pamela Frank, Paul Neubauer, and Carter Brey; Colored Field, a concerto for Julie Ann Giacobassi (English horn) and the San Francisco Symphony; Goblin Market for narrator and ensemble, on a text by Christina Rossetti, for the Birmingham [England] New Music Group; Air for violinist Joshua Bell; an a cappella work for the Birmingham Bach Choir and the Plymouth Music Series; Lament and Prayer, a work for violin and string orchestra for Pamela Frank and the Minnesota Orchestra; and Double Concerto for Violin, Guitar, and Orchestra, commissioned by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival, and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra for Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and Sharon Isbin. Kernis helped to usher in the new Millennium with a monumental choral symphony, Garden of Light, commissioned by the Disney Company. A new version of Colored Field for cello and orchestra featuring Truls Mřrk and a song cycle, Valentines, for Renee Fleming were both premiered by the Minnesota Orchestra in April 2000.
Aaron Jay Kernis was born in Philadelphia on January 15, 1960. He began his musical studies on the violin; at age 12 he began teaching himself piano, and, in the following year, composition. He continued his studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, and the Yale School of Music, working with composers as diverse as John Adams, Charles Wuorinen, and Jacob Druckman. Kernis received national acclaim for his first orchestral work, dream of the morning sky, premiered by the New York Philharmonic at the 1983 Horizons Festival.
Kernis is one of the most honored young American composers. In addition to the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for his String Quartet No. 2 (musica instrumentalis), his many awards have included the 2002 Grawemeyer Award in Music Composition for the cello and orchestra version of Colored Field, the Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize, an NEA grant, a Bearns Prize, a New York Foundation for the Arts Award, and three BMI Student Composer Awards. Currently he serves as the Minnesota Orchestra's New Music Advisor. Kernis's music is published by Associated Music Publishers.
"Elliott Carter is one of America's most distinguished creative artists in any field," said Aaron Copland in nominating Mr. Carter for the Gold Medal of the National Institute of Arts and letters for Eminence in Music in 1971. The work of Mr. Carter (b. 1908) has been a major dynamic force in American music for almost three-quarters of a century. Among his awards are two Pulitzer Prizes, Guggenheim fellowships, the Brandeis Creative Arts Award, the Sibelius Medal, the Critics Circle Award, the Gold Medal of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the National Medal of Arts. At an early age he was introduced to Charles Ives, with whom he attended concerts and discussed not only musical ideas but also transcendentalism. Another important influence was Nadia Boulanger, with whom he studied from 1932-35, after graduating from Harvard. His extensive writings on new music, found in the periodical "Modern Music" and in several published collections, have had a significant impact in shaping American musical thought. Together with Ives he developed a compositional method of "continual variation"—to supplant formal expectations, to keep the listener caught up in the moment-to-moment evolution of the music. Another characteristic technique is his incorporation of an almost inconceivably detailed knowledge of the sound and playing technique of the instruments for which he is writing, allowing this knowledge to help shape the musical material. Carter's compositions include stage, orchestral, choral and vocal works, and a particularly rich and varied collection of chamber and instrumental works. A fascinating and insightful study of his music can be found in David Schiff's The Music of Elliott Carter (Cornell University Press).
Mr. Carter contributes the following note about Esprit rude/Esprit doux:
Esprit rude/Esprit doux was composed for the celebration of Pierre Boulez's 60th birthday on March 31, 1985, commissioned by the Southwest German Radio. The title, translated as "rough breathing/smooth breathing," refers to the pronunciation of classical Greek words beginning with a vowel. With esprit rude (rough breathing) the initial vowel is to be preceded by a sounded H, and is indicated by a reverse comma above the letter. With esprit doux (smooth breathing) the initial vowel is not to be preceded by H and is indicated by a comma above the vowel. In the Greek for "sixtieth year" (transliterated as hexekoston etos) the initial epsilon of the first word has a rough breathing sign while the epsilon of the second has a smooth one.
The score begins and ends with the motto:
B flat C A E
B (O) U L E (Z)
t a
using both the French and German names of the notes.
Both instruments have some rough and some smooth breathing.
The English composer Harrison Birtwistle was born in Accrington in 1934. He studied at the Royal Manchester College of Music (1952-5), where Davies and Goehr were fellow students, interesting themselves in contemporary and medieval music. He then worked as a clarinetist and schoolteacher for brief periods; in 1975 he was appointed music director at the National Theatre. His works suggest comparison with Stravinsky in their ritual form and style, and sometimes with Varčse in the violence of their imagery (as in the opera Punch and Judy, 1968, a savage enactment of pre-social behaviour). In the 1970s, however, he began to work musical blocks into long, gradual processes of change (The Triumph of Time for orchestra,1972), then to develop networks of interconnected pulsings beneath such processes (Silbury Air for small orchestra,1977; ...agm... for voices and orchestral groups, 1979). His biggest work of this period was the opera The Mask of Orpheus (1973-83, performed 1986), a multi-layered treatment of the myth.
Mr. Birtwistle writes:
In 1998 several composers were asked to write short tributes in honor of Elliott Carter's ninetieth birthday to be published in Tempo magazine. I contributed the first three of these settings of poems by Lorine Niedecker, and extended the collection to feature nine poems for the Nash Ensemble in 2000.
Lorine Niedecker (1903-1970) was born and spent most her life on Blackhawk Island on the Rock River in Wisconsin. Her poems are mostly short and their haiku-like intensity reminded me of the fragments of Sappho's poetry that I set in my Entr'actes and Sappho Fragments, Cantata and ...agm... I was attracted to the intimite, fragile quality of the verse, which should be reflected in the performance.
I think of this sequence of vocal miniatures, starting with my offering for Carter, as being like a bunch of flowers.
Conductor, composer and pianist, André Previn continues to redefine the possibilities in his extraordinary career, already one of the most distinguished musicians of our time. With the 1998 premiere of his first opera A Streetcar Named Desire in San Francisco and its subsequent PBS telecast and Deutsche Grammophon recording, Mr. Previn (who also conducted the performances and the recording) added new luster to his unique position in the world of music. In recent years, his diverse achievements have won him a succession of honors, from Germany's Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit and a Kennedy Center Honor for Lifetime Achievement, to a Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Recording and the Grand Prix du Disque for his Streetcar recording. Musical America also named him Musician of the Year. In the 2002-03 season, Mr. Previn will begin a 4-year term as Music Director of the Oslo Philharmonic.
A Streetcar Named Desire, which Mr. Previn set to a libretto by Philip Littell based on Tennessee Williams' play, had its premiere at the San Francisco Opera on September 19, 1998, with soprano Renée Fleming in the role of Blanche du Bois. In January 2001, Mr. Previn conducted the premiere of the "semi-staged" version of A Streetcar Named Desire with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. In December 2001, the opera had its European premiere at the Opera du Rhin in Strasbourg. In March 2002, the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Mr. Previn conducting, will give the world premiere performance of the Previn Violin Concerto written for Anne-Sophie Mutter (a BSO commission). Mr. Previn's season will also include a program of his songs and chamber music at the Terrace Theater of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
On commission from Carnegie Hall, Mr. Previn is currently writing a piece for the Emerson String Quartet and Barbara Bonney to be premiered in Spring 2003. He is currently at work on his second opera, which is based on the Alessandro Baricco novel Silk. During the 1999-2000 season, Mr. Previn had new works premiered and recorded by the Vienna Philharmonic (Diversions) and Renée Fleming (The Giraffes Go To Hamburg and Three Songs of Emily Dickinson). Other recent compositions include a violin work for Anne-Sophie Mutter (Tango, Song and Dance) and a bassoon sonata. Previous compositions have included a piano concerto for Vladimir Ashkenazy, a violin sonata for Young Uck Kim, a cello sonata for Yo-Yo Ma, songs for mezzo-soprano Janet Baker, soprano Sylvia McNair and Barbara Bonney, and a music drama — Every Good Boy Deserves Favour — for the London Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with playwright Tom Stoppard.
In 1996, Mr. Previn was awarded a Knighthood (KBE) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
His concert music is published by G. Schirmer, Inc. and Chester Music Ltd.
Born in Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, in 1939, Jonathan Harvey was a chorister at St. Michael's College in Tenbury (1948-52), a pupil at Repton (1952-57), and then a major music scholar at St. John's College, Cambridge. He earned doctorates from the Universities of Glasgow and Cambridge and also studied privately (on the advice of Benjamin Britten) with Erwin Stein and Hans Keller, thus gaining an early acquaintance with the school of Schoenberg. In the 1960s, he composed freely and was influenced variously. Whilst a Harkness Fellow at Princeton (1969-70), he was brought into contact, albeit briefly, with Milton Babbit, whose influence was one of great significance to Harvey's later development. He emerged from his Princeton years seemingly surer of his musical aims with regard to form and harmony, an immediate result of his work in Schenkerian analysis.
An invitation from Boulez to work at IRCAM in the early 1980s resulted in four commissions from them to date, including the widely-praised tape piece, Mortuos Plango Vivos Voco, as well as Bhakti, for instrumental ensemble and tape, Ritual Melodies, for computer-manipulated sounds, and Advaya, for cello and live and pre-recorded sounds. Harvey has also composed for most other genres: large orchestra, (Madonna of Winter and Spring), chamber, (three: String Quartets, Song Offerings, Lotuses, and Scena), as well as works for solo instruments.
Harvey's opera, Inquest of Love, was commissioned by English National Opera and premiered at the Coliseum in June 1993. It also staged at Theatre de la Monnaie, Brussels, in January of 1994. Much admired for its sophisticated and effective use of electronic sounds, which are blended with a conventional orchestra, it was acclaimed as the outstanding achievement among recent ENO opera commissions. Works in progress include a percussion concerto for Evelyn Glennie for performance at the 1997 BBC Promenade Concerts.
About The Riot, Mr. Harvey writes:
The Riot is a work in which virtuoso exhilaration is predominant. The game is to throw around themes which retain their identity sufficiently to bounce sharply off each other, even when combined polyphonically or mixed up together in new configurations. Each theme belongs to a distinctive harmonic field characterized by about two intervals; for example, the first is based on fourths and whole tones, which can in turn create minor sevenths and, as a further development, linear unfoldings in circles of fourths (or fifths).
From time to time energy runs out and mechanical repetition of an element takes over, dying away like an electronic "delay". Such a process, in extended form, provides the ending.
The Riot was written for HET TRIO of Amsterdam (my title is an anagramatic tribute) and commissioned by the Bristol University Music Department with funds provided in part by South West Arts.
Guest artists:
Reneé Jolles is an accomplished solo violinist and chamber musician with an active performance schedule throughout Europe and North America, and has been featured at the festivals of Marlboro, Bard College, Taos, Norfolk, and Bowdoin, as well as those in Solingen, Germany and Merano, Italy. She was invited to play the American premiere of the preeminent Russian composer Alfred Schnittke's second violin concerto with the Juilliard Orchestra in Alice Tully Hall. She is a founding member of the Andreas Trio. She is a member of Continuum, the Jolles Duo, the Roerich String Quartet and the Andreas Trio, and a frequent guest with many groups including the Da Capo Chamber Players, the Group for Contemporary Music, and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, where she frequently serves as concertmaster. She is on the faculty of the Juilliard School, Pre-College Division.
Possessed of a luminous voice, superb musicianship, "mellifluous, creamy phrasing and breathtaking virtuosity" (London Sunday Times), an astonishing aptitude for learning new works and an ardour for opening new musical vistas, LUCY SHELTON is internationally renowned as one of the foremost American concert sopranos of our era. Ms. Shelton's career encompasses an expansive scope, from Bach and Handel to Babbitt and Carter. She has performed in recital, opera, chamber music and as an orchestral soloist, and she is well known for her innovative programming. The ease and grace with which she moves within such a broad repertoire and vocal range have earned her a reputation for being able to take on almost any vocal challenge.
Lucy Shelton is in great demand as an interpreter of new music. Numerous works have been written for Ms. Shelton, including Elliott Carter's Of Challenge and Of Love, Sally Beamish's Monster, Stephen Albert's Flower of the Mountain, Oliver Knussen's Whitman Settings (her New York Philharmonic debut), Poul Ruder's The Bells and Joseph Schwanter's Magabunda. Among the works she has premiered are David Del Tredici's Quaint Events, Alexander Goehr's Sing, Ariel (at her Aldeburgh Festival debut), Gérard Grisey's L'Icone Paradoxale, Ned Rorem's Schuyller Songs , Dmitri Smirnov's 8 Line Poems and James Yannatos's Trinity Mass.
Further career highlights include performances of Pierre Boulez's Le Visage Nuptial with the Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra, all conducted by the composer, her BBC Proms debut in Luigi Dallapiccola's Il Prigioniero and the role of Jennifer in Michael Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage for Thames TV. She made her Vienna and Berlin debuts singing György Kurtág's The Sayings of Peter Bornemisza with András Schiff. She has sung Luigi Nono's Il Canto Sospeso in London and at the Holland and Salzburg Festivals, Hans-Werner Henze's Das Floss der Medusa in Munich and Cologne, Arnold Schoenberg's Erwartung in The Hague, Peter Maxwell Davies' Revelation and Fall in Los Angeles and Hannover, and Elliott Carter's A Mirror on Which to Dwell at the Warsaw Autumn Festival.
On recent releases for Deutsche Grammophon Lucy Shelton is heard with the Cleveland Orchestra in Stravinsky's Faun and Shepherdess, with the London Sinfonietta in Knussen's Whitman Settings, with the Schoenberg Ensemble in chamber music of Ruth Crawford Seeger and with the Asko Ensemble in a soon-to-be released recording of David Del Tredici's Syzygy and Vintage Alice. For KOCH International, she has teamed with pianist John Constable to record Olivier Messiaen's Harawi as well as the premiere recording of Elliott Carter's Of Challenge and Love with the complete songs of Igor Stravinsky. She can also be heard on Bridge Records with the Da Capo Chamber Players in Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire and Herzgewächse.
Lucy Shelton is a graduate of Pomona College and the New England Conservatory, both of which have honored her as a Distinguished Alumna. She currently teaches at the New England Conservatory and Tanglewood Music Center. Ms. Shelton has the distinction of being the only artist to receive the International Walter Naumburg Award twice.
Clarinetist Meighan Stoops is an active chamber musician, recitalist, and teacher. She has performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the Key West Symphony Orchestra, Barge Music, the Con Brio Ensemble, and with the DaCapo Chamber Players on John Schaefer's New Sounds on WNYC and at MATA (Music at the Anthology). Ms. Stoops holds degrees from Northwestern University and Yale University, where she was the recipient of the Lucy G. Moses Fellowship and the Dean's Award. Past teachers include Russell Dagon, David Shifrin, and Kalmen Opperman.
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