We saw Katie off yesterday and received a text from her this morning saying that she arrived home. She was delayed 3 1/2 hours in Atlanta, so she got home really late - after 1 a.m. I think! I am so glad to know she made it home safely. But she must be exhausted.
Today, Wednesday, we are back at Marlboro. We just heard a piece by Gyorgy Kurtag, Einige Sätze aus den Sudelbüchern Georg Christoph Lichtenbergs (1996/1999), for soprano and double-bass. I don't know who the soprano is today, but the double bassist is William Langlie-Miletich, whom we have heard before. This piece is being performed tonight at a concert in the dining-room for the Festival community. In other years we have been able to go to those Wednesday-evening concerts, but I think the pandemic has closed them to the public this year. So there is no written information available about the participants. Here is a paragraph about the work:
"The polymath, naturalist and aesthetician Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799) is an interesting figure of 18th-century German cultural history. Yet his most important work, his collection of aphorisms, only appeared posthumously. It embraces almost all the themes that concerned the thinkers of the era, often with a satirical tone. Kurtág selected texts from these volumes for his work, which in its original version (op. 37, 1996) was indeed a musical aphorism collection freely assembled by the performer - this version was withdrawn. However, the final form, composed in 1999, cannot be disjoined. It is a unified composition, although the material for the vocal score remained almost unchanged. Some pieces are purely aphoristic snapshots, yet by means of virtuoso double bass accompaniment, notwithstanding their brevity, are movements of great format. Thus the work can be placed beside Kurtág's major vocal cycles: it is akin to his Kafka Fragments, op. 24 and Attila József Fragments, op. 20 series, but is perhaps closest to Eszká-emlékzaj (Remembrance Noise), op. 12 duo for soprano and violin. Despite the short movements, the form is not fragmentary: the building blocks of the individual pieces of the closed unity within the cycle, even if in character they are different, in this respect echo the shaping principles of the early instrumental pieces (op. 1-5) in Kurtág's oeuvre. "
To say that this piece is unusual would be a vast understatement. First of all, there can't be many double-bass/soprano duets in the literature. Secondly, like many pieces by Kurtag, this is a series of very short outbursts. The double-bass player must be thrilled to have a piece like this to play because it uses the instrument in an astonishing way. There is a lot of bowing and plucking, of course, but other things as well! At one point, the soprano came over and turned one of the screws that controls the tension on a string. I had never seen that done before! It is a fascinating piece! Kurtag is exploring new territory musically, for sure. If you are curious, you could find it performed on YouTube, I'm sure.
Later:
We are now going to hear Three Songs from William Shakespeare by Igor Stravinsky. This will be performed this coming Saturday, so I know the names of the musicians: Rebecca Printz, mezzo-soprano; Marina Piccinini, flute; Bixby Kennedy, clarinet; Zhanbo Zheng, viola.
"Stravinsky's Three Songs from William Shakespeare, for mezzo soprano, flute, clarinet, and viola (1953) were his first songs since the Four Russian Songs of 1919. While he had set texts in English before, most recently in his opera The Rake's Progress (1948 - 1951) and in his Cantata (1951 - 1953), the Shakespeare settings were the first art song settings Stravinsky had made in English. The first song, "Musick to heare," uses the text of the Eighth Sonnet; the second, "Full Fathom Five," is Ariel's song from The Tempest, and the third, "When Dasies Pied," is the cuckoo's song from Love's Labour's Lost. The harmonic language of the Shakespeare Songs balances tonal implications with limited serial techniques. Thus while the melodic line of "When Dasies Pied" implies first A flat major and then C major, the accompaniment lines describe a series of four-note tone rows and their permutations. The music itself is dry to the point of aridity and nowhere near as effective as Stravinsky's moving setting of Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" of only a few months later, from In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954)."
Later:
This afternoon, we are hearing Anton Webern's String Quartet (1905). David Orvek writes, "Anton Webern’s String Quartet (1905) lies at a pivotal point in his career. While most scholars to date (including Webern himself) have tended to view this quartet as a mere stepping stone toward Webern’s later atonal language, Sebastian Wedler argues for the interpretation of the work on its own terms as an instance of an altogether different path that Webern later abandoned. In particular, Wedler focuses on Webern’s treatment of sonata form. Where Wedler argues for understanding the quartet’s significant sonata deformations as the way in which Webern engages with the sonata rhetoric of the early twentieth century, however, I argue that it is in these deformations that the quartet most points towards the future."
Webern was in a circle of composers such as Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg, known as the Second Viennese School, who explored atonal music. This early work is transitional and has some very beautiful moments.
Coming up next is a Piano Quartet in E-flat Major by Dvorak, which I expect will be gorgeous. Kai Christiansen writes, "While Dvořák is not typically mentioned along with Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms as the chief dominating masters of classical and romantic chamber music, he belongs in this group. He composed prodigiously and masterfully in the genre turning out dozens of string quartets, piano trios, the magnificent piano quintet and two fine piano quartets. Dvořák's music is grounded in the classic forms and the finest procedures while projecting a unique personality throughout. Dvořák is often compared with Brahms as the latter was a mentor and champion of the former and their proximity of time and place inclines their music towards a similar style. Yet Dvořák is in many ways is closer to Schubert who was one of Dvořák's idols. Together, they possessed a profound gift for lyricism, romantic sweep, and an exquisite artistry for tone, color and texture that makes their music sound positively enchanted. A final comparison with Schumann shows that both composers produced a brilliant piano quintet followed swiftly by a piano quartet of equal magnificence yet destined to remain somewhat in the shadows of its older, bigger sibling."
No comments:
Post a Comment