Joel Hoffman's works draw from such diverse sources as Eastern European folk musics and bebop, and are pervaded by a sense of lyricism and rhythmic vitality. Born in Canada, Hoffman received degrees from the University of Wales and the Juilliard School. He is a member of a distinguished musical family that includes brothers Gary (cellist), and Toby (conductor), sister Deborah (harpist). Honors include a major prize from the American Academy-Institute of Arts and Letters, two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bearns Prize of Columbia University, a BMI Award, ASCAP awards since 1977, and three American Music Center grants. His works have been performed by many ensembles such as the Chicago Symphony Brass, the BBC Orchestra of Wales, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, eighth blackbird, the Cleveland Quartet, the Shanghai Quartet, and acclaimed soloists such as Cho-Liang Lin, David Krakauer and Brian Ganz. Hoffman served as composer-in-residence with the National Chamber Orchestra of Washington, DC (1993-94) and held the position of New Music Advisor for the Buffalo Philharmonic (1991-92). He has been a resident composer at the Rockefeller, Camargo and Hindemith Foundations, the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. Currently, he is Professor of Composition at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music. Watch a performance of  Joel Hoffman's Music in Yellow and Green (2012) played by members of the Hoff Barthelson Contemporary Music Festival . . . it's one of our NEW MUSIC VIDEOS for the week.

Vincent Ho is widely recognized as one of the most exciting composers of his generation. His works have been hailed for their profound expressiveness and textural beauty that has audiences talking about with great enthusiasm. Born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1975, Vincent Ho began his musical training through the Royal Conservatory of Music. He received his Associate Diploma in Piano Performance from the Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto) in 1993, his Bachelor of Music from the University of Calgary in 1998, his Master of Music degree from the University of Toronto in 2000, and his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Southern California (2005). His mentors have included Allan Bell, David Eagle, Christos Hatzis, Walter Buczynski, and Stephen Hartke. His many awards have included Harvard University’s Fromm Music Commission, The Canada Council for the Arts’ “Robert Fleming Prize,” ASCAP’s “Morton Gould Young Composer Award,” four SOCAN Young Composers Awards, and CBC Radio’s Audience Choice Award (2009 Young Composers’ Competition). Listen to an interview with Vincent Ho -  Évolution (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) . . . it's our COMPOSER PORTRAIT for the week.

When World War II ended, William Schuman was positioned, at age thirty-five, as one of America’s most important composers and arts leaders. Not only had he won the very first Pulitzer Prize for music in 1943, for A Free Song: Secular Cantata No. 2, but he took on his new responsibilities as president of the Juilliard School of Music at the beginning of the 1945-46 academic year. His music had been performed by prominent American orchestras, especially the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) under Serge Koussevitzky, and he had already composed five symphonies (the first two of which were withdrawn), including the expertly crafted Third Symphony and the animated Fifth Symphony for strings alone. Thus, at this time Schuman was in the prime of his compositional life. A new concerto for violin and orchestra would most likely embody the energy, musical creativity, and expert orchestration that were becoming the hallmarks of a Schuman composition. Schuman was approached by the well-known violinist Samuel Dushkin in 1946 to compose a violin concerto that Dushkin hoped he would be able to premiere with Koussevitzky and the BSO. Dushkin had a very distinguished record of first performances of violin works, including Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto, the Duo concertant, and Suite italienne . . . [read more in this article: "The William Schuman Violin Concerto: Genesis of a 20th Century Masterpiece" by Joseph Polisi]. And listen to a performance of Schuman Violin Concerto (1959) played by Philippe Quint (violin) and the Bournemouth Sinfonietta, José Serebrier conducting . . . one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Composer Annie Gosfield is an active performer and improviser. She is inspired by the sound and use of machines, destroyed pianos, warped records and detuned radios. She explores the use of non-musical sound. She also incorporates the use of out of tune violins that are not played right. Her notation consists of traditional notation, improvisation and other techniques that break the boundaries between what is known as music and noise. Her pieces range from large scale, chamber music, electronic music, video projects and music for dance. She has played with many different muscians such as Joan Jeanrenaud, John Zorn, David Moss, and Sim Cain. Her music has been used for choreography by several dance companies across the world. Gosfield created a six minute film about an imaginary orchestra (of machines playing instruments) called Shoot The Player Piano (1999)  . . . it's this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

Sebastian Currier  Almost too much, from "Verge" (1997) . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Apollon musagète (1928) - Music by Igor Stravinsky - Choreography by George Balanchine . . . our DANSES PYTHEUSES for the week.

Leonard Bernstein  Benediction (Concerto for Orchestra, mvt 4) (1989) . . . it's one of our PYTHEAS EARFULS for the week.

Aaron Copland  Clarinet Concerto (1949)
Apollon musagète (1928) - Music by Igor Stravinsky - Choreography by George Balanchine
Kile Smith  Symphony: Lumen ad revelationem (2002)

Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day is an English carol usually attributed as 'traditional'; it first appeared in print in William B. Sandys' Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern (1833). The verses of the hymn progress through the story of Jesus told in his own voice, with an innovative feature of the telling being that Jesus' life is repeatedly characterized as a dance. This device was later used in the modern hymn Lord of the Dance. Most well known in John Gardner's choral adaptation, many other composers have set or arranged the tune, including Gustav Holst, David Willcocks, John Rutter and Andrew Carter. . Watch a performance of Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day in John Gardner's 1965 version performed by King's College Choir, Cambridge . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

James Travers (Films de France) writes about René Clair's 1924 film Entr'acte: "This extraordinary early film from director René Clair was originally made to fill an interval between two acts of Francis Picabia’s new ballet, Relâche, at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris in 1924. Picabia famously wrote a synopsis for the film on one sheet of note paper headed Maxim’s (the famous Parisian restaurant), which he sent to René Clair. This formed the basis for what ultimately appeared on screen, with some additional improvisations. Music for the film was composed by the famous avant-garde composer Erik Satie, who appears in the film, along side its originator, Francis Picabia. The surrealist photographer Man Ray also puts in an appearance, in a film which curiously resembles his own experimental films of this era. Entr'acte is a surrealistic concoction of unrelated images, reflecting Clair’s interest in Dada, a fashionable radical approach to visual art which relied on experimentation and surreal expressionism. Clair’s imagery is both captivating and disturbing, giving life to inanimate objects (most notably the rifle range dummies), whilst attacking conventions, even the sobriety of a funeral march. When the first performance of Relâche was cancelled because of the ill-health of one of is stars, the public were outraged. There was a belief that Picabia had staged the ultimate Dada stunt – as Relâche is the French word used on posters to indicate that a show is canceled, or the theater is closed. The controversy was laid to rest when the show opened, a few days later than planned. For its part, Clair’s Entr'acte won widespread praise, although the response from the paying public was divided. As to what the film actually means, well that’s anyone’s guess. Like all good surrealist art there are an infinite number of possible interpretations, and one’s appreciation and understanding of this film is very much a subjective experience. Themes which appear to dominate the work are death, mortality and the hastening pace of technology. Hence, one possible interpretation is that the film is mocking mankind’s attempts to cope with the brevity of his existence. As progress is made, man has to run faster and faster to cram more and more into a fixed duration, his limited lifespan. Could the Entr'acte of the film’s title represent that short period of what we call 'life', that too brief an interval between two acts of an eternal duration?" Watch René Clair's Entr'acte with music by Erik Satie . . . it's our PYTHEAS SIGHTING for the week.

In the Fall of 1910, Sergei Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky convinced Alexandre Benois to write a scenario (in collaboration with Stravinsky) and to design costumes and sets for an original ballet to be entitled Petrushka. The ballet premiered in Paris in 1911, and was perhaps the most successful and influential of Diaghilev's "Ballets Russes" productions. The All Music Guide writes, "Stravinsky's score for Petrushka is brilliant, charming and absorbing, one of the most magical scores in all the classical literature. Stravinsky borrowed folk tunes to illustrate the crowd scenes, used bitonal chords to signify Petrushka's dual existence as puppet and living being, wrote his own seductive melodies, and stitched it all together seamlessly with a genius for dramatization and flair for orchestration that could only come from Stravinsky." Watch a performance of Stravinsky's Petrushka, one of the most brilliant and magical ballets in the modern repertoire in a performance by the Bolshoi Ballet . . . our DANSES PYTHEUSES this week.

Pawel Lukaszewski is one of the younger generation of Polish composers specialising in sacred and choral music. He studied composition with Marian Borkowski and cello with Andrzej Wrobel at the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw and in 2000 and 2007 he received a Ph.D and Ph.D Hab. respectively in composition. His works have been performed throughout Europe, as well as in Argentine, Chile, China, Israel, Cuba, Canada, South Korea, Peru, Uruguay and the United States. In addition, his works have been recorded on more than fifty CDs. Hear a performance of Pawel Lukaszewski's choral work Hommage a Edith Stein (2002) . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

Igor Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920) strikes the listener as singular for several reasons. The use of the word "symphonies" for a 10-minute piece single movement seems odd until we think back to the ancient word of "sounding together in harmony" (although as musicologist William Austin has pointed out, "nowhere before the final chord is there an unquestionable tonic or a complete and unclouded major scale"). Stravinsky clarified the use of the word, somewhat, by calling his piece "an austere ritual which is unfolded in terms of short litanies between different groups of homogeneous instruments." The lack of strings was also odd for a piece called "symphonies." Some have pointed to Stravinsky's shunning of the lush, romantic qualities of string instruments, others to post-war economic woes that made works written for smaller forces more likely to earn a performance. But the sonority of the Symphonies is so strikingly perfect to its content that one can't imagine it in any other setting. It is, again in
the words of Austin, "one of Stravinsky's most poignantly beautiful masterpieces, with a form as original and convincing as that of the Rite of Spring, and as hard to define." Watch a performance of Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments performed by Netherlands Wind Ensemble with Reinbert De Leeuw conducting . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

William Schuman's 60-year career as a composer and an educator left an indelible mark on several generations of American musicians. He began exploring jazz and popular music while attending public school. After abandoning a career in commerce, Schuman enrolled in the Juilliard Summer School, and, in 1933, entered Columbia University's Teacher's College, eventually taking his bachelor's and master's degrees. He not only studied with American composer Roy Harris, he found an ally in conductor Serge Koussevitsky. Between 1938 and 1945 Schuman served as director of publications for G. Schirmer, Inc. as well as on the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College, leaving this post to take over as president of the Juilliard School. Other administrative positions throughout his long career include serving as president of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (1962-1969), director of the Koussevitsky Music Foundation, director of the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center, and director of the Walter W. Naumberg Foundation. Already an established composer in the early 1940s, Schuman was thrust into the national and international limelight when the very first Pulitzer Prize in music was bestowed upon him in 1943 for his cantata A Free Song. His Third Symphony (1941), is considered by many to be one of the pinnacles of American symphonic achievement. Hear Schuman talk about his life and music . . . our current COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

According to composer AND choreographer Miro Magloire, "a choreographer setting an existing piece of music faces a dilemma: music written for the concert hall is often too dense to be successfully juxtaposed to dance. Many interesting results could be won from just such a misalignment, but it is rarely consciously exploited. Instead, choreographers tend to either choose music that is so simple as to approach banality, providing them with peace of mind and a rhythmic flow, or humbly distort their choreography, stretching and pulling it until it fits the dimensions of a musical masterwork - but almost loses its own identity in the process. I have been guilty of both offenses. Writing my own music for Reflections allowed me a way out of this conundrum: the dance starts with no music at all, giving the steps a chance to establish their own rhythm. Later, the dancer slows to near stillness as the music gets a chance to be heard. In the end, both what is heard and what is seen is spare enough to need the other for completion. Watch a performance of Magloire's Reflections I (2007) performed by members of the New Chamber Ballet . . . our DANSES PYTHEUSES this week.

Jonathan Elliott, a native of Philadelphia, is a composer, pianist and sound designer. His music has been heard internationally in concert and broadcasts. He has received numerous awards and honors for his music, including fellowships from the MacDowell Colony,Yaddo, the Ragdale Foundation, the New State Council on the Arts, the International Festival of New Music at Darmstadt, Centre Acanthes, the Aspen Music Festival, and the W.K. Rose Trust. In addition he he has won prizes from BMI, ASCAP, the Chicago Symphony, the American Composers Forum, Forum 91/UNESCO, and has been a nominee for the American Academy of Arts and Letters music awards. Hear a performance of Elliott's Odd Preludes (2000) for alto sax and piano . . . this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

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

According to composer David Sartor "Reveries (2007) depicts a soul's final reflections on a rich life filled with both triumph and regret. The work concludes with the soul's last cry heavenward, followed by the incredible homecoming and overwhelming peace of being joined with God". Hear and see the world premiere performance of Reveries by the Burlington Chamber Orchestra with conductor Michael Hopkins . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Considered by many to be the most important composer of the 20th century, Russian-American Igor Stravinsky revitalized European music tradition with his irregular rhythms, dissonant voicings and life-long willingness to experiment. Beyond his famed ballets and orchestral suites like The Firebird and The Rite of Spring, he was also a renowned conductor, pianist, teacher and collaborator with many of the great artists of his era. In Igor Stravinsky: Composer, film maker Janos Darvas has created an extraordinary portrait, woven from a voluminous legacy of fascinating film interviews and performances, to reveal one of the great musical minds. See excerpts from the film ... this week's COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

... And for those who haven't fully explored the Pytheas Center's website, please check out COMPOSERS SPEAK ON THE WEB. Hear and see composers talk about their life and music using our ever expanding online video and streaming audio sources. Fascinating portraits of contemporary music's creative artists.

Choreographer Patrick Delcroix describes Adrift in Softness (2007) as an "essentially abstract piece playing with the idea of a central character drifting between different states of consciousness. Within this condition of reverie, reality is suspended and free-flowing thoughts and memories blend into each other, receding as mysteriously as they appear". Watch an excerpt from this beautiful dance work (with music by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto) . . . this week's DANSES PYTHEUSES.

Iranian born Behzad Ranjbaran’s music has been described as having "qualities of inherent beauty and strong musical structure that make it a satisfying musical entity". Hear Janis Bukowski perform his Ballade for Solo Contrabasse (1999), commissioned by the International Society of Bassists . . . FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

From the folks over at Bad Assembly: "György Ligeti composed Artikulation in 1958 and recorded it at the Studio of Electronic Music of the West German Radio in Cologne. The piece predates the modern analog synthesizers of the late 60’s and early 70’s – the sound sources are a combination of generated sound and tape manipulation. When you hear it you can’t help but think of R2D2, and yet Artikulation was written 20 years before Star Wars was released. Twelve years after Ligeti recorded the piece, Rainer Wehinger created an "aural score" for it. The liner notes from Ligeti's score provide an explanation for what’s going on in the music: "The piece is called Artikulation because in this sense an artificial language is articulated: question and answer, high and low voices, polyglot speaking and interruptions, impulsive outbreaks and humor, charring and whispering". To realize this in a score, Wehinger used a timeline measured in seconds, and used shapes and colors instead of notes on a staff. He used dots for impulses and combs for noise. He used different colors to represent variations in timbre and pitch". Have a look and listen - György Ligeti's Artikulation (1958) with "aural score" by Rainer Wehinger . . . one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

"It's impossible to discuss twentieth-century music without touching upon Stravinsky's best-known work (Le Sacre du Printemps/The Rite of Spring - 1913) to some extent. Indeed, the twentieth century's long list of masterpieces would have been inconceivable if not for this forty-minute work that ruffled many feathers at its debut". (Paul-John Ramos: Stravinsky's Le Sacre at 90, Classical Net). Watch a performance choreographed in 1959 by the great Maurice Béjart ... our current DANSES PYTHEUSES.

Check out what Phil Muse of Sequenza21 is talking about ... "The scintillating performance by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra under Gerard Schwarz - a longtime champion of contemporary music - of four works by Bright Sheng shows clearly why this composer is a great favorite among present-day musicians. He has a penchant for treating traditional instruments of the orchestra in non-traditional ways that today’s generation of young musicians find stimulating and challenging. And his rhythmic vocabulary will keep everyone (the audience included) on their toes" ... this week's FEATURED RECORDING. Then read Vivien Schweitzer's (The New York Times) article about Bright Sheng's life and works - Intrepid Journey Leads to Ambitious Works - our FEATURED THOUGHT & IDEA this week at Pytheas.

And what more can be said about the most controversial piece of contemporary music there is - John Cage's 4' 33" (1952). I think it's just best to have a listen with a friend and speak your mind ... experience it at FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

According to composer Michael Daugherty "No rock and roll personality seems to have inspired as much speculation, adulation, and impersonation as Elvis Presley (1935-77). In Dead Elvis (1993) the bassoon soloist is an Elvis impersonator accompanied by a chamber ensemble. It is more than a coincidence that Dead Elvis is scored for the same instrumentation as Stravinsky's L’histoire du Soldat (1918), in which a soldier sells his violin - and his soul - to the devil for a magic book. I offer a new spin on this Faustian scenario: a rock star sells out to Hollywood, Colonel Parker, and Las Vegas for wealth and fame. I use the Dies Irae - a medieval Latin chant for the Day of Judgment - as the principal musical theme of the composition to pose the question, "is Elvis dead or alive beyond the grave of Graceland?". In Dead Elvis we hear fast and slow fifties rock and roll ostinati in the double bass, violin and bongos, while the bassoonist gyrates, double-tongues and croons his way through variations of Dies Irae. Elvis is part of American culture, history and mythology, for better or for worse. If you want to understand America and all its riddles, sooner or later you will have to deal with Elvis." Check out a performance by bassoonist Hayley Pullen at the Royal Academy of Music, London ... one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

Michael Horwood's more than seventy compositions constitute a kaleidoscope of the traditional and the avant-garde, spanning a wide variety of contemporary idioms including twelve-tone, theatre pieces, electroacoustic (both live and pre-recorded), jazz, minimalism and neo-romanticism. He has written for conventional ensembles, unusual instrumental combinations and even flexible scoring. Horwood seems content writing in any genre and, similarly, feels a composer today should be able to adapt and create in a variety of styles. From all the deliberate variety in Horwood's music, a few personal traits have tended to emerge. One of these is an acute sense of sonority, the knack of exploiting the unique ranges and timbres of his instrumental forces, whether solo or in combinations. This use of instrumental sound is occasionally coupled with an overt sense of theatricality or humour, even in his non-theatre works. Hear Michael Horwood talk about his life and works ... this week's COMPOSER PORTRAIT.

sound festival 2009 is an exciting festival of new music in North East Scotland, driven by the passion to make new music more accessible to audiences of all ages and backgrounds. They try to avoid pigeon-holing, wanting people to experiment and discover for themselves the different types of music that are out there today, taking risks to find out what they enjoy (or don't!). Hoping to create a live music experience that leaves its audience eager to explore sound in new ways, they introduce this wide range of music and sound (classical, contemporary, improvisation, traditional, popular, jazz, experimental, ambient, sound art, electro-acoustic, etc.) through a variety of events including concerts, talks, installations and workshops. This year the festival runs from October 28th through November 22nd ... check it all out at Pytheas' NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL page.

Silvestre Revueltas wrote of his childhood, "As a small boy (and maybe as an adult) I always preferred banging on a washtub or dreaming up tales to doing something useful. And that is how I spent my time, imitating instruments with my voice, improvising orchestras and songs to accompaniments on the washtub, one of those round galvanized tubs that I always preferred to drum on more than to bathe in." Hear how that "all came out in the wash" with the Martinez Bourguet String Quartet's performance of the first movement of Revueltas' String Quart No. 4, "Música de Feria/Fair Music"(1932) ... this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES.

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

With his Fantasia bética (1919) ("bética" refering to the region in the south of Spain that the Romans called Baetica, now known as Andalusia), Manuel de Falla brought the classical world to new territory – Spanish modernism, which Falla seems to have invented. There's an obvious debt to the Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, but Falla does not imitate so much as melt down and recast. And much like Stravinsky, he penetrates to the primitive heart of his culture. In Fantasia bética Falla depicts the three essential components of Flamenco art: singing, dancing and the hand clap. Hear it now ... one of this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC VIDEOS.

The American Classical Music Hall of Fame is a non-profit organization devoted to celebrating the past, present and future of American classical music. Located in the historic Herschede building in downtown Cincinnati on Fourth Street, the 9,000 square-foot facility contains a variety of engaging displays. The first floor houses biographical plaques highlighting the lives and accomplishment of each inductee. In addition, the facility also includes an art gallery and areas for temporary exhibits and performances - it's this week's FEATURED NEW MUSIC WEBSITE.

Lee Actor's music is filled with rhythmic drive and shows the composer’s superb ear for orchestral color. His Horn Concerto (2007) won first prize in the 2007 International Horn Society Composition Contest. Hear Actor’s beautiful Horn Concerto ... our second NEW MUSIC VIDEO for this week at Pytheas.

Check out the performance of Mitchell Peters' Yellow After the Rain (1999) - one of our Fun/Cool/Great New Music Videos! ... and this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVE.

Explore, Listen and Enjoy!

Vinny Fuerst
Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music

According to David Gutman, Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 occupies a special place in his output. The product of 1917, the year of Revolutions, it had its belated premiere in Paris in October 1923. The score is remote from conventional expectations of Romantic and virtuoso display. The work is scored with a precise economy of means, so that lean, translucent textures predominate despite the prominent part for tuba. As if the opening melody (conceived as early as 1915) were not magical enough, its recapitulation on solo flute (pp dolcissimo) with harp, muted strings and lightly running tracery from the soloist is quite ravishing, matched by the more elaborate return at the end of the finale. The central movement, a mercurial scherzo, gives the soloist ample opportunities for high jinks. Everywhere the flow of ideas is so spontaneous that the music seems to create its own form, an alloy of innocence and sophistication."

Written 50 years after Prokofiev's Concerto, Alfred Schnittke's score for the film The Commissar (1967) comes from a completely different sound world. The film itself traveled a tragic and rocky road before receiving the special prize of the jury and the Silver Bear at the Berlinale 1988 and four professional Nika Awards (1988). It was shot in the political climate of the post-Khrushchev thaw. From the outset of the production, censors forced the film director Aleksandr Askoldov to make major changes: 1967 was the year of the 50th anniversary of 1917 October Revolution and the events were to be presented in the Communist Party-mandated style of heroic realism. After making the movie, director Askoldov lost his job, was expelled from the Communist Party, charged with social parasitism, exiled from Moscow and banned from working on feature films for life. He was told that the single copy of the film had been destroyed. Mordyukova and Bykov, major Soviet movie stars, had to plead with the authorities to spare him of even bigger charges. The film was shelved by the KGB for twenty years. In 1986, due to glasnost policies, the "Conflict Commission" of the Soviet Film-makers Union recommended the re-release of the movie but the censors refused to act. After a plea from Askoldov at the Moscow Film Festival, the film was reconstructed and finally released in 1988. Check out the first scene - this week's Pytheas Sighting ...

Sit back, close your eyes and take in a Pytheas Earful of Elaine Fine's Serenade for Oboe and Strings (2007) [sorry, no longer available], presented at the University of Illinois and made available thanks to U of I's Media Center.

And don't be put off by the setting - an empty room with music propped up a clarinet case - for this week's FROM THE PYTHEAS ARCHIVES performance of the first of Stravinky's Three Pieces for Clarinet (1919). It's the music that counts!

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