We couldn't resist putting these two videos together this week. Zoltán Kodály's music for Háry János (1926) is a classic and quite unusual in featuring a cimbalom, the Eastern European version of a hammered dulcimer. Other composer who have used the instrument include Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók Pierre Boulez, Peter Maxwell Davies and even Frank Zappa and Elvis Costello in concert works of theirs. And so it is that we find film composer Hans Zimmer using it in his 2009 score for Sherlock Holmes. To celebrate the musicians who helped perform the music for Sherlock Holmes we're given this quite fun music video of music from the film score . . . this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS. Enjoy!
Jennifer Higdon started late in music, teaching herself to play flute at the age of 15 and then beginning formal musical studies at 18, with an even later start in composition at the age of 21. Higdon makes her living from commissions and her music is known for its technical skill and audience appeal. Hailed by the Washington Post as "a savvy, sensitive composer with a keen ear, an innate sense of form and a generous dash of pure esprit," the League of American Orchestras reports that she is one of America's most frequently performed composers. From a PBS special called Being Creative in Philadelphia we hear Higdon talk about her life and her music . . . it's our current COMPOSER PORTRAIT. And by the way, her Violin Concerto just won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Congratulations Ms. Higdon!
According to Art Lange (Fanfare Magazine), "Rumor has it that there's a big chunk of the classical music listening public that is afraid of contemporary music. When it's played with the passion and conviction that violinist Jennifer Koh generates on behalf of these 21st-century scores, the skeptics have nothing to fear. She displays impeccable technique and a flawless tonal range regardless of their degree of difficulty, and more important, uncovers the lyrical impulse at the music's core. Jennifer Koh is a hell of a violinist (sorry, couldn't resist), and this is a most impressive collection." Check out Jennifer Koh's CD Rhapsodic Musings - 21st Century Works for Solo Violin . . . this week's FEATURED RECORDING.
Sinfonía India (1936) by Mexican composer Carlos Chávez is one of the best examples of his forays into musical nationalism. Based on mestizo music from Chávez's childhood as well as including a massive array of native percussion, this is one of the most impressive and accessible pieces in the composer's repertoire. Watch a fabulous performance of the Sinfonía India (1935-36) by Gustavo Dudamel and the Berlin Philharmonic . . . this week's FROM THE
PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.
Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music
Friday, April 30, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
George Tsontakis has received two of the richest prizes awarded in all of classical music - the international Grawemeyer Award, in 2005, for his Second Violin Concerto, and the 2007 Charles Ives Living award, given every three years by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Ryan Morris writes of Tsontakis' Violin Concerto No. 2 (2003), "This is an extraordinary violin concerto. The more you listen to it, the more you will enjoy it and the more it will call to you with its strange glasslike textures and rolling rhythms. There is much lyricism here, as can be heard in the first movement and the "cantilena" - the heart - of the concerto; it's one of the finest pieces Tsontakis has composed." See a performance of the Violin Concerto No. 2 with violinist Paul Kantor and the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra conducted by Michael Adelson . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.
Hikurangi Sunrise was composed by Christopher Marshall for the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in 1999 as the result of a quest by the orchestra and ConcertFM Radio to find a piece to mark the turn of the millennium. In 2000, after several performances throughout New Zealand it was judged overwhelmingly the audience's favorite work. According to the composer, "Hikurangi Sunrise, is a festive overture expressing my feelings for Aotearoa-New Zealand. Hikurangi is the sacred mountain on East Cape in the North Island of New Zealand. It is the first place in the world to see the sun. I imagined myself standing on the summit as the sun rose, with a bird's-eye view of the beach, forests and farmlands below. The music is strongly melodic throughout, with an unmistakably Romantic flavor and not without the occasional, slightly ironic nod in the direction of the nationalistic overtures of past ages." Listen to a performance of Hikurangi Sunrise by New Zealand Symphony Orchestra with James Judd conducting . . . our current PYTHEAS EARFUL.
Christopher Lydon at Open Source writes, "My subtitle for Alex Ross's addictive encyclopedia The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century would be: How the headquarters of musical composition moved from Vienna to Los Angeles: from the old home address of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms to its new home in and around Hollywood: home, that is, of the refugee modernists Stravinsky and Schoenberg and of course the movie business and the film score: name your monument from Bernard Herrmann's themes for Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941) and the great Hitchcocks, to Tan Dun's for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)." Read more and listen to an interview with Alex Ross about contemporary music . . . it's this week's FEATURED THOUGHT & IDEA.
According to composer Alex Shapiro, " I named my 2004 composition Bioplasm because 'Oozing Up From the Primordial Sludge' seemed a bit long for a title. Bioplasm is the stuff of life, the germinal matter that's essential for living beings to generate. This is a squishy piece: rather than exploit the individual voice of each flute, I wanted to create an organism that oozes across the sonic floor as one tethered entity, sometimes slowly, sometimes at a quick pace, but always as one, like a Slinky toy. The blend of homogenous sound with four flutes is a throbbing pulse of life; add to this four human voices, and it's a choir of plasma, looking for life to begin." Hear Alex Shapiro's Bioplasm, accompanied by artist Simon Kenevan creating a pastel study for After a Storm . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.
Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music
Hikurangi Sunrise was composed by Christopher Marshall for the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in 1999 as the result of a quest by the orchestra and ConcertFM Radio to find a piece to mark the turn of the millennium. In 2000, after several performances throughout New Zealand it was judged overwhelmingly the audience's favorite work. According to the composer, "Hikurangi Sunrise, is a festive overture expressing my feelings for Aotearoa-New Zealand. Hikurangi is the sacred mountain on East Cape in the North Island of New Zealand. It is the first place in the world to see the sun. I imagined myself standing on the summit as the sun rose, with a bird's-eye view of the beach, forests and farmlands below. The music is strongly melodic throughout, with an unmistakably Romantic flavor and not without the occasional, slightly ironic nod in the direction of the nationalistic overtures of past ages." Listen to a performance of Hikurangi Sunrise by New Zealand Symphony Orchestra with James Judd conducting . . . our current PYTHEAS EARFUL.
Christopher Lydon at Open Source writes, "My subtitle for Alex Ross's addictive encyclopedia The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century would be: How the headquarters of musical composition moved from Vienna to Los Angeles: from the old home address of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms to its new home in and around Hollywood: home, that is, of the refugee modernists Stravinsky and Schoenberg and of course the movie business and the film score: name your monument from Bernard Herrmann's themes for Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941) and the great Hitchcocks, to Tan Dun's for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)." Read more and listen to an interview with Alex Ross about contemporary music . . . it's this week's FEATURED THOUGHT & IDEA.
According to composer Alex Shapiro, " I named my 2004 composition Bioplasm because 'Oozing Up From the Primordial Sludge' seemed a bit long for a title. Bioplasm is the stuff of life, the germinal matter that's essential for living beings to generate. This is a squishy piece: rather than exploit the individual voice of each flute, I wanted to create an organism that oozes across the sonic floor as one tethered entity, sometimes slowly, sometimes at a quick pace, but always as one, like a Slinky toy. The blend of homogenous sound with four flutes is a throbbing pulse of life; add to this four human voices, and it's a choir of plasma, looking for life to begin." Hear Alex Shapiro's Bioplasm, accompanied by artist Simon Kenevan creating a pastel study for After a Storm . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.
Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music
Sunday, April 18, 2010
In his review of the Opera Theater of St. Louis' performance of Scott Joplin's Treemonisha (1916) Anthony Tommasini (The New York Times) writes, "But what ultimately ennobles the opera is Joplin's music. The score is often awkward, yet disarming. Though Joplin was the king of ragtime there are actually few real rags in the opera. The lilt and lyricism of ragtime music run through the score, as does the melancholia that is always part of Joplin's voice, even in such seemingly jolly works as The Maple Leaf Rag. A gentle sadness pervades every bit of Treemonisha: the recitatives; the moments of tension, thick with seventh chords; the confessional arias, like Monisha's moving account of her adopted daughter's origins; even the dances and choruses. And when the time comes for jubilation at the happy ending, what does Joplin provide? A Real Slow Drag, a wistful dance of subdued joy and hope." Watch a performance of this "happy ending" with soprano Carmen Balthrop and the Houston Grand Opera . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.
Krzysztof Penderecki has been an exceptional phenomenon in the history of music, not only in that of Polish music, but in the history music in general. And in twentieth-century music, no one has had a career quite like his. He enjoyed success from the very start. When the results of the Second Competition of Young Composers were decided in 1959, it turned out that Penderecki's compositions (submitted under different pseudonyms) had taken the first, second and third prizes - Krzysztof Penderecki, an unknown 28-year-old assistant professor at the Composition Department of the State Musical Academy in Krakow. In 1960, he wrote a work titled 8'37" (which is how long the composition lasts), for which he received a prize the next year from the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in Paris. The work is now known as Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, and it has been played all over the world. During that period Penderecki became a leading representative of avant-garde music. Then in 1966 came the premiere performance of his Passion According to St. Luke. With this work, Penderecki parted with the radicalism of the avant-garde. He began composing works that were accessible to the average music lover - with a content, construction and emotions that were instantly understandable. Penderecki has said, "It is not important to me how the St. Luke Passion is described, whether as traditional or an avant-garde. For me it is simply one that is genuine. And that is enough." He is himself in each of his works, and he has not allowed the critics to discourage him. He stands his own and has continued to write music his own way. Hear Penderecki talk about his life and his music . . . our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.
The Silencers (1966) is a quintessential 1960's spy spoof movie, directed by Phil Karlson. It is the first (and best) of four colorful Matt Helm fims, with debonair 'Rat Pack' member Dean Martin cleverly cast as a womanizing smoothie, the Man from ICE (Intelligence Counter Espionage). The attitudes may have dated — this is very much of its time — but the women continue to delight, especially Stella Stevens as a divine klutz. According to Mark Hasan (Film Score Monthly), "The film score of The Silencers fused big-band arrangements with a level of playful yet aggressive writing, imbued with a vigor reminiscent of composer Elmer Bernstein's classic 1950s output. That isn't to say his 1960s scores to that time were weak, but The Silencers exudes such vitality and goofiness that the final result is utterly addictive." Watch a montage from this over the top film backed by the infection music of the great Elmer Bernstein . . . our current PYTHEAS SIGHTING.
Conductor Andre Kostelanetz expressed nervousness at premiering William Schuman's New England Triptych with the New York Philharmonic, so he instead first performed it with the University of Miami Symphony Orchestra on October 26, 1956. It was played in New York the following week. Critics gave glowing reactions - and the New England Triptych became an instant classic. The music is based on three hymn tunes by 18th century American composer William Billings: "Be Glad Then, America," " When Jesus Wept," and "Chester." With the exception of his arrangement of Charles Ives’ organ piece "Variations on America," New England Triptych is recorded and performed more often than any work by William Schuman. Hear a classic performance of the New England Triptych with Max Rudolph conducting the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.
Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music
Krzysztof Penderecki has been an exceptional phenomenon in the history of music, not only in that of Polish music, but in the history music in general. And in twentieth-century music, no one has had a career quite like his. He enjoyed success from the very start. When the results of the Second Competition of Young Composers were decided in 1959, it turned out that Penderecki's compositions (submitted under different pseudonyms) had taken the first, second and third prizes - Krzysztof Penderecki, an unknown 28-year-old assistant professor at the Composition Department of the State Musical Academy in Krakow. In 1960, he wrote a work titled 8'37" (which is how long the composition lasts), for which he received a prize the next year from the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in Paris. The work is now known as Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, and it has been played all over the world. During that period Penderecki became a leading representative of avant-garde music. Then in 1966 came the premiere performance of his Passion According to St. Luke. With this work, Penderecki parted with the radicalism of the avant-garde. He began composing works that were accessible to the average music lover - with a content, construction and emotions that were instantly understandable. Penderecki has said, "It is not important to me how the St. Luke Passion is described, whether as traditional or an avant-garde. For me it is simply one that is genuine. And that is enough." He is himself in each of his works, and he has not allowed the critics to discourage him. He stands his own and has continued to write music his own way. Hear Penderecki talk about his life and his music . . . our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.
The Silencers (1966) is a quintessential 1960's spy spoof movie, directed by Phil Karlson. It is the first (and best) of four colorful Matt Helm fims, with debonair 'Rat Pack' member Dean Martin cleverly cast as a womanizing smoothie, the Man from ICE (Intelligence Counter Espionage). The attitudes may have dated — this is very much of its time — but the women continue to delight, especially Stella Stevens as a divine klutz. According to Mark Hasan (Film Score Monthly), "The film score of The Silencers fused big-band arrangements with a level of playful yet aggressive writing, imbued with a vigor reminiscent of composer Elmer Bernstein's classic 1950s output. That isn't to say his 1960s scores to that time were weak, but The Silencers exudes such vitality and goofiness that the final result is utterly addictive." Watch a montage from this over the top film backed by the infection music of the great Elmer Bernstein . . . our current PYTHEAS SIGHTING.
Conductor Andre Kostelanetz expressed nervousness at premiering William Schuman's New England Triptych with the New York Philharmonic, so he instead first performed it with the University of Miami Symphony Orchestra on October 26, 1956. It was played in New York the following week. Critics gave glowing reactions - and the New England Triptych became an instant classic. The music is based on three hymn tunes by 18th century American composer William Billings: "Be Glad Then, America," " When Jesus Wept," and "Chester." With the exception of his arrangement of Charles Ives’ organ piece "Variations on America," New England Triptych is recorded and performed more often than any work by William Schuman. Hear a classic performance of the New England Triptych with Max Rudolph conducting the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.
Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Greg Sandow writes, "Measured by index space in Paul Griffiths’s Modern Music, Milton Babbitt is the most important living American nonexperimental composer, and apart from John Cage, the most notable American composer of any kind. But Griffiths can't show nonspecialists why they should care. Babbitt's Second String Quartet, he says, "is based on an all-interval series which is introduced interval by interval, as it were, with each new arrival initiating a development of the interval repertory acquired thus far, each development being argued in terms of derived sets." This comes close to what George Bernard Shaw dismissed as "parsing", and which parodied with an "analysis" of "To be or not to be." Shakespeare, Shaw wrote, "announces his subject at once in the infinitive, in which mood it is presently repeated after a short connecting passage in which, brief as it is, we recognize the alternative and negative forms on which so much of the significance of repetition depends." Musical parsing is far more defensible now than it was in Shaw's time -- styles vary so much that musical grammar can't be taken for granted – but Griffiths does too much of it. He doesn't say how the structures he talks about really work, how Babbitt's derived sets "argue" (whatever that means) each new "development"(oh, really?); and Griffith has only passing remarks about the music's "wit", "surface rhythmic appeal", and the work's "sure musical continuity" - nothing about how Babbitt's music sounds or how it might make a listener feel. This isn't entirely his fault, though, because composer Milton Babbitt talks about music the same way." With all that in mine, let's just sit back and LISTEN to Babbitt's music - in this case his String Quartet No. 4 (1970) - and enjoy the sound world of one of the great composers of our time . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.
"Take an Argentine composer of Jewish extraction, mix in the dance rhythms of Africa – by way of Brazil and Cuba – and you might just get a flavor of Osvaldo Golijov’s La Pasión según San Marcos (St. Mark Passion) - a work which has been rapturously received by audiences everywhere. So, without hearing a note of La Pasión según San Marcos it’s clearly as far from Johann Sebastian Bach’s own Passions and Lutheran sensibilities as it’s possible to get. Golijov was able to start from a clean slate as it were, since the score of Bach’s St. Mark Passion, premiered in Leipzig in 1731, is lost. One can only wonder what the venerable old organist would have made of the forces assembled by Golijov – choir, all-important percussionists, trumpets, trombones, guitars (including bass), piano, strings, Berimbau (a Brazilian instrument of African origin), vocalists and dancers. Indeed, only the stoniest of hearts could fail to be moved – and moved mightily – by this searing work." [Dan Morgan, MusicWeb International] . . . read more about the latest recording of this groundbreaking work and hear, and watch, excerpts from Golijov's St. Mark Passion . . . it's our FEATURED RECORDING for the week.
"The Seven Deadly Sins marks the end of Kurt Weill’s European career and the beginning of a nearly two-decade hiatus in Bertold Brecht’s. It was Weill’s last collaboration with Brecht and the last enduring work that he composed in his European theater style. This style is characterized by its directness, which is a product of Weill’s use of elements from popular music – in the case of this work, dance music and the barbershop quartet – as well as his use of established musical forms, like the church chorale. Weill would adapt his style to Broadway when he came to the United States in 1935, and he really never composed anything quite like The Seven Deadly Sins again." [John Mangum/The LA Philharmonic] Hear a performance of "Anger" from Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins (1933) by Measha Brueggergosman, Peter John Buchan, Scott Reimer, Kris Kornelsen, Derek Morphy and the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra with Ann Manson conducting . . . our current PYTHEAS EARFUL.
Born in 1876 in Cadiz, Spain, the historical seaport town at the southern-most tip of Andalucia, Manuel de Falla was the greatest Spanish composer of the 20th century. After the death of Claude Debussy in 1918, Falla was asked to contribute to a planned memorial issue of La revue Musicale, one of the most famous musical publications of the time. Though the request was for an article, Falla preferred to respond with a piece of music. The result was his Homenaje (Homage) - The tomb of Debussy (1920). Watch a performance by the great Julian Bream . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.
Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music
"Take an Argentine composer of Jewish extraction, mix in the dance rhythms of Africa – by way of Brazil and Cuba – and you might just get a flavor of Osvaldo Golijov’s La Pasión según San Marcos (St. Mark Passion) - a work which has been rapturously received by audiences everywhere. So, without hearing a note of La Pasión según San Marcos it’s clearly as far from Johann Sebastian Bach’s own Passions and Lutheran sensibilities as it’s possible to get. Golijov was able to start from a clean slate as it were, since the score of Bach’s St. Mark Passion, premiered in Leipzig in 1731, is lost. One can only wonder what the venerable old organist would have made of the forces assembled by Golijov – choir, all-important percussionists, trumpets, trombones, guitars (including bass), piano, strings, Berimbau (a Brazilian instrument of African origin), vocalists and dancers. Indeed, only the stoniest of hearts could fail to be moved – and moved mightily – by this searing work." [Dan Morgan, MusicWeb International] . . . read more about the latest recording of this groundbreaking work and hear, and watch, excerpts from Golijov's St. Mark Passion . . . it's our FEATURED RECORDING for the week.
"The Seven Deadly Sins marks the end of Kurt Weill’s European career and the beginning of a nearly two-decade hiatus in Bertold Brecht’s. It was Weill’s last collaboration with Brecht and the last enduring work that he composed in his European theater style. This style is characterized by its directness, which is a product of Weill’s use of elements from popular music – in the case of this work, dance music and the barbershop quartet – as well as his use of established musical forms, like the church chorale. Weill would adapt his style to Broadway when he came to the United States in 1935, and he really never composed anything quite like The Seven Deadly Sins again." [John Mangum/The LA Philharmonic] Hear a performance of "Anger" from Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins (1933) by Measha Brueggergosman, Peter John Buchan, Scott Reimer, Kris Kornelsen, Derek Morphy and the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra with Ann Manson conducting . . . our current PYTHEAS EARFUL.
Born in 1876 in Cadiz, Spain, the historical seaport town at the southern-most tip of Andalucia, Manuel de Falla was the greatest Spanish composer of the 20th century. After the death of Claude Debussy in 1918, Falla was asked to contribute to a planned memorial issue of La revue Musicale, one of the most famous musical publications of the time. Though the request was for an article, Falla preferred to respond with a piece of music. The result was his Homenaje (Homage) - The tomb of Debussy (1920). Watch a performance by the great Julian Bream . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.
Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music
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