Isang Yun's Duo for Cello and Harp (1984) is yet another convincing example of Yun’s lyricism in his later works - it is accessible and mellow-toned; but it is still quite intricately worked-out. The main expressive weight lies in the outer movements - the third movement is particularly beautiful - and the mood relaxes in the dance-like middle movement. It is also one of Yun’s happiest works, probably because it was composed on the occasion of his son’s wedding. Watch a performance of Yun’s Duo by cellist Holgen Gjoni and harpist Ina Zdorovetchi . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Dutch composer Michel van der Aa is one of Europe’s most sought-after contemporary composers. His style is strikingly subtle, playful, poetic, and transparent but not, however, expressive or melodious in the traditional sense. His music has an idiomatic sense for the stage, combining sounds and scenic images in a play of changing perspectives. Dramatic personages take on various identities or have an alter ego: musicians on the stage, not always audible, mime or lip-sync with their electronic counterparts on soundtrack. Van der Aa is in fact a playwright in music. His sounds - like real people - can be flexible or stubborn: they either take control or get the short end of the stick; they reinforce or counteract each other, affecting audiences with their expressive power. Hear Michel van der Aa talk about his opera After Life and watch excerpts from it . . . our current COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

According to Tamsin Nutter, "In the beautiful, plotless Sinfonietta (choreographed in 1980), Jiri Kylian plays deftly with patterns and movement dynamics, and yet the result is wonderfully humanist. As befits a great work of art, movement, music, backdrop, and costumes feel indivisible. Leos Janacek’s spine-tingling music (composed in 1926), a golden cacophony of trumpets and trombones, seems to echo off the rolling hills of Walter Nobbe’s gorgeous backdrop. A swirling community of men and women run, leap, and hit the floor, punctuating the large-scale patterns with bewitchingly unexpected little gestures: a bow of the head, a hand drawn in slow motion across the eyes. Sinfonietta is lushly romantic, yet skewed — familiar, yet strange — striking a perfect balance between ballet’s past and future." Watch a performance of Sinfonietta by the Netherlands Dance Theatre . . . this week's DANSES PYTHEUSES.

Icelandic composer Jón Leifs' Hekla (1961) for chorus and orchestra describes the eruption of the volcanic mountain Hekla in 1947, the largest of the 20th Century, which Leifs witnessed. The music is one massive, ever-intensifying depiction of volcanic eruption, beginning quietly but graphically increasing in intensity and power reaching a tumultuous climax during which one hears a brief chorus (almost overwhelmed by the massive orchestra/percussion sound), singing: "In the dark depths, violent cries of death/ There the red flames carried/ The steaming lava across the land." Leifs scored Hekla for orchestra and a huge complement of percussion. Nineteen percussion players are needed. Percussion instruments required include "rocks with a musical quality," steel ship's chains, anvils, sirens, church bells, shotguns and canons. Listen to a performance of Leifs' Hekla . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

On January 19, 1936 Paul Hindemith travelled to London, intending to play his viola concerto Der Schwanendreher, with Adrian Boult and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. This was to be the British premiere of the work. However, just before midnight on January 20th, King George V died. The following day, from 11 am to 5 pm, Hindemith sat in an office made available to him by the BBC and wrote Trauermusik (Funeral Music/Mourning Music) in homage to the late king. It, too, was written for viola and orchestra and was performed that evening in a live broadcast from a BBC radio studio, with Boult conducting and the composer as soloist. The work consists of four very short movements, last of which is the heart of the work. In it Hindemith quotes the chorale Vor deinem Thron Tret ich hiermit (Here I stand before Thy throne). Though Hindemith was unaware of it at the time, the tune was also very familiar in England as Old 100th, to the words All creatures that on Earth do dwell. Watch a performance by the magnificent violist Yuri Bashmet with the Soloists of Moscow . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.


Our FEATURED THOUGHT & IDEA for the week is a conversation between Korean-German composer Isang Yun and Bruce Duffie (at bruceduffie.com). Here's how things start . . . "Bruce Duffie: Let me start out with an easy question - Where is music going today? Isang Yun: I don't think anyone can really answer this question, myself included. I can say for myself that my music is becoming more understandable, and I find a quality of human sympathy is becoming more prevalent in it. BD: Is this something being added now that was missing earlier, or is it an outgrowth of the way your music has been going all these years? Yun: It's part of a natural process, and I've just noticed it through observation. This is a process that started about ten yeas ago and I think it will be at least another ten years before it is fully developed. BD: Did something specific happen at that point ten years ago to make this change? Yun: My experience of the personal side and political area in Korea happened twenty years ago, and it took ten years for me to be able to translate these experiences into my music. I think today our world very badly needs music that brings us closer together, particularly because there are so many grave problems that people everywhere are having to deal with. In order to be able to articulate these problems in art, we need a great deal of musical understanding . . ." Read more at Pytheas.

For Stefan Wolpe (1986) is among American composer Morton Feldman's last works; one of many dedicated to composers, painters, and writers he admired. Written for chorus and two vibraphones, the work alternates between choral sonorities and instrumental passages, creating a series of refrains which at first seem like simple repetitions, but which in fact change and expand gradually over the piece's thirty minutes. Described by Feldman as "crippled symmetry," this technique was inspired by the slight alterations in repeating patterns he observed in oriental carpets. Hear a performance of Feldman's For Stefan Wolpe . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

In 1940, when Thornton Wilder's Our Town was about to become a film, the Hollywood producer Sol Lesser asked Aaron Copland to compose the music. Copland admired Wilder, and when he heard that Our Town had been written mostly at the MacDowell Colony and that Grovers Corners was patterned after the town of Peterborough, N. H., where Copland had composed several works, the combination was too much for the composer to resist. After Our Town was successfully released, Copland arranged about 10 minutes of the film score into an orchestral suite and adapted some excerpts for piano. Watch a performance of the piano excerpt Conversation by the Soda Fountain from Our Town (1940) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

John Rutter is one of England's best-known composers of the late twentieth century, as well as a widely respected choral conductor and music scholar and editor. While his choral works (including the Te Deum, Magnificat, and Requiem) are the most familiar, he has also written instrumental works and two children's operas. He has a strong sense of the English musical traditions, and some of the more significant English musical influences on his work include Vaughn Williams, Walton and Britten. Listen to his beautiful setting of the 23rd Psalm, The Lord is My Shepherd (1978) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Born in La Plata, Argentina to Romanian-Jewish immigrants nearly 50 years ago, composer Osvaldo Golijov now lives just outside Boston, as one of the world's most admired composers. The reason why his music connects so magnetically with performers and audiences alike is its clear appeal to the senses. "I want my music to be intuitive," the composer explains. Each of Golijov's compositions is different. The influences include South America, the synagogue and the shtetl, wrapped in a life-filled tonal shimmer. It wasn't always easy for Golijov to express himself this way in university – he completed his graduate studies in Israel and the U.S. "I was feeling alienated from that aesthetic," Golijov says of the tyranny of serialism and other atonal experiments in the 1980s. "Then, in one week, my first daughter was born and my mother, who taught me how to play piano, died. It was that whole cycle of new life and death. It opened my eyes, and I realized I don't have to please academic orthodoxy. "You don't become a musician to get rich," he adds, laughing. "So I decided I should do what makes me happy." Golijov describes his method of writing as a combination of "intuitive impulses." "It's like Michelangelo, who said that the shape is inside the piece of marble. All you need are the right tools to find it". Listen to Osvaldo Golijov speak about his life and music . . . he's our current FEATURED COMPOSER.

Here's what Jacob Swanson of the Erie Saxophone Quartet has written about Sarah Horick's Deleted Scenes (2008), "Recently our quartet was SO FORTUNATE to have the opportunity to work with Sarah Horick, a composer currently working in Florida. She wrote a lovely piece for our ensemble, "Deleted Scenes," which consists of seven short movements - each portraying a different character. Our ensemble is looking forward to growing with this work and performing it for a long time to come. I'd love to hear what you think of the piece!" Have a listen for yourself to Deleted Scenes (2008) and let US know what you think . . . the work is one of this week's PYTHEAS EARFULS.

In 1920 Maurice Ravel was asked to contribute to a special commemorative supplement of La Revue musicale dedicated to Claude Debussy. Appearing in December 1920, the supplement included what would become the first movement of his Sonata for Violin and Cello (1920-22). Ravel had begun this movement in April 1920, and would need almost two years to complete the four movements of the Sonata. Of the Sonata Ravel wrote, "In my own work of composition I find a long period of conscious gestation, in general, necessary. During this interval I come gradually to see, and with growing precision, the form and evolution which the subsequent work should have as a whole." "The music is stripped to the bone," Ravel wrote. "Harmonic charm is renounced, and there is an increasing return of emphasis on melody." This lean, ruthlessly linear Sonata is dedicated to the memory of Debussy. Watch a performance of the second movement of Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Cello performed by Paul and Yan-Pascal Tortelier . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

Composer Arnold Schoenberg was personally affected by Nazi policies of Kulturkampf and antisemitism. He was obliged to resign his position at the Prussian Academy of Arts shortly after Hitler's rise to power in 1933, and his music, branded "degenerate" and "Bolshevist," was banned throughout the Third Reich. That same year he left Germany forever; friends and family who stayed behind perished in killing centers. A prophet in the field of music, Schoenberg also turned a visionary eye toward the political scene. Of Europe's threatened Jewry he wrote in 1938: "Are they condemned to doom? Will they become extinct? Famished? Butchered? ...[T]he fate of the Austrian and Hungarian Jews was sealed years ago. And can a man with foresight deny that the Jews of Romania and Poland are in danger of a similar fate?" Schoenberg spent the war years in southern California, in reduced circumstances and ill-health, only rarely able to compose. On hearing a personal account of the Warsaw ghetto rebellion, however, he created A Survivor from Warsaw in a ten-day burst of inspiration, drawing the text almost directly from the survivor's words. The work received its premiere in 1947. A Survivor from Warsaw is in two short sections, played without pause. The first part, for speaker and chorus, consists of the survivor's account of his ordeal. The second part depicts a chorus of panic-stricken Jews en route to the gas chambers, where—to the survivor's amazement—they begin to intone the traditional confession of their faith, the Sh'ma Yisrael. Eyewitnesses affirm that such chanting did occur in Treblinka, Auschwitz, and other killing centers. Sh'ma Yisrael was by custom the final utterance of Jewish martyrs, sages, and others—a last profession of trust in divine will. In the face of an annihilation that promised to wipe out both the individual and the culture whose essence the prayer embodied, the act of reciting the ancient creed was more than a demonstration of faith or submission. As Schoenberg recognized, and as the music to A Survivor from Warsaw forcefully asserts, to pray Sh'ma Yisrael under such circumstances was also an act of defiance. Watch a stunning performance of Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw by Hermann Prey and the Bamberger Symphoniker conducted by Horst Stein . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

About the Naxos Records recording Leroy Anderson - Orchestral Music, Volume One David Hurwitz (ClassicsToday) writes, "All in all, it's hard to deny this release the strongest possible recommendation. The music may be light, but the craftsmanship and standard of quality are second to none. It's a special mystery that Leroy Anderson was dissatisfied with the concerto, his only large-scale orchestral work, withholding its publication during his lifetime. We could use a "Gershwin alternative", and this piece is just the ticket. From the "Rachmaninov without the gloom" opening, to the Latin interludes in the Andante, to the finale's hoe-down reel of a main melody, this piece is a winner. Both Leonard Slatkin and pianist Jeffrey Biegel give the piece the royal treatment, playing with both passion and humor. You'll love it. And Biegel's rendition is the best on record. Check it all out . . . it's our current FEATURED RECORDING.

El signo de la muerte (The Sign of Death) is a curious film from 1939 made by prestigious Mexican collaborators: director Chano Urueta, comedian and actor Fortino Mario Alfonso Moreno Reyes, known professionally as Cantinflas (a pioneer of the cinema of Mexico), and composer Silvestre Revueltas. According to Carlos Monsivais, "The plot promises much more than it deliver: Cantinflas is a "peladito" [a certain class of urban 'bum' in Mexico in the 1920's] employed in a museum who, quite by accident, discovers the clue to a series of crimes caused by the madness of an Aztec grand priest attempting to restore human sacrifice and Moctezuma's empire." Have a look and listen (sorry, it's in Spanish without subtitles) . . . it's this week's PYTHEAS SIGHTING.

Much of Luciano Berio's music, the Sequenzas included, inhabits a world of inner drama which interacts with the outside world in a surreal fashion. It's the kind of drama which confronts and subverts within the mind, entering and rummaging around in the subconscious and then rearing up in front of you like a giant balloon clown when you least expect it. The relationships of perspective between the player and his/her instrument, and between the player and the audience, are in state of constant distortion and flux. This is summed up in a way by that single word 'why' in Sequenza V (1966) for trombone. The 'wha' of the mute being moved over the bell of the instrument is given an added declamatory significance after that moment, and a musical conversation or monologue - real or imagined, ensues/Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International. Watch a performance of Berio's Sequenza V (1966) for trombone played by Dave Day . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!
Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music