NEW@NIGHT: Echoes of Home

Some of the most innovative and revolutionary composers of our time embrace and elevate our “Songs from Home” theme that connects classical music with their own national heritage.

We’ll explore these sounds through Ligeti’s combination of Hungarian folk elements with modernism, as well as Wu Man’s Glimpses of Muqam Chebiyat highlighting traditions of Uyghur Muqam from China’s Xinjiang region. We will also experience works by two composers who will be with us—Portland’s own Kirsten Volness’s Shima Enaga, written for Portland pianist Yoko Greeney and connected to her Japanese heritage, and Kit Armstrong performing his own Études de dessin, inspired by Chinese ink painting and calligraphy. Our journey culminates with Armstrong performing Ligeti’s seventh Musica Ricercata on The Old Church’s incredible pipe organ.

Come join our artists for lively conversation about these exciting contemporary works both before and after their performances.

The Old Church
Wednesday, 7/1 • 7:00 pm

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Program

Click on any piece of music below to learn more about it.

GYÖRGY LIGETI Viola Sonata

GYÖRGY LIGETI (1923–2006) Viola Sonata (20’)

I. Hora lungǎ
II. Loop
III. Facsar
IV. Prestissimo with sordino
V. Lamento
VI. Chaconne chromatique

The viola is seemingly just a big violin but tuned a fifth lower. In reality the two instruments are worlds apart. They both have three strings in common, the A, D, and G string. The high E-string lends the violin a powerful luminosity and metallic penetrating tone which is missing in the viola. The violin leads, the viola remains in the shade. In return the low C-string gives the viola a unique acerbity, compact, somewhat hoarse, with the aftertaste of wood, earth, and tannic acid.

Two chamber music works awoke my love of the C-string many years ago; in Schubert’s last string quartet (in G major) and in the slow movement of Schumann’s Piano Quintet the dark elegance of the viola comes to the fore also often in orchestral works by Berlioz. In 1990, I heard Tabea Zimmermann play the viola in a WDR concert in Cologne; her particularly vigorous and pithy—and yet always tender—C-string was the starting point for my fantasies of a viola sonata. With the plan of a sonata to be written later already in my head, I wrote the short viola piece Loop (now the second movement of the sonata) in 1991 as a birthday present for Alfred Schlee, the excellent publisher. In 1993 I wrote Facsar (now the third movement) in remembrance of my dear composition teacher Sándor Veress who died in Bern and who was an unjustly neglected composer—his music must be performed again! It was also in 1993 that Klaus Klein enquired about a first performance in Gütersloh and Tabea Zimmermann agreed to play the complete sonata. The movements 1, 4, 5, and 6 are therefore new; I dedicated the two outer movements to Tabea Zimmermann, the fourth movement to Klaus Klein, and the fifth to Louise Duchesneau, my colleague of many years.

1st movement Hora lungă: It evokes the spirit of Romanian folk music which, together with Hungarian folk music and that of the Roma, made a strong impression on me during my childhood. However I do not write folklore or use folkloristic quotations, it is rather allusions which are made. Hora lungă literally means “slow dance” but in the Romanian tradition this is not a dance but are sung folk melodies (in the northernmost province of the country, Maramures, in the centre of the Carpathian mountains), nostalgic and melancholy, richly ornamented. There is a striking similarity to the “Cante jondo” in Andalusia and also folk music in Rajastan. Whether this has something to do with the Roma migration or is a common, old indo-european, diatonic melodic tradition is hard to decide. This movement is played exclusively on the C-string and in it I make use of natural intervals (pure major third, pure minor seventh, and also the 11th harmonic).

2nd movement Loop: The title refers to the form; the same melodic figures are repeated, continually varied rhythmically and played progressively faster in tempo. Double-stoppings are played throughout with one of the notes always being an open string. The performer is therefore compelled to carry out daring position changes which in the fast section of the movement creates a “dangerous virtuosity”. In addition, this movement must also be played in the spirit of jazz: elegant and “relaxed.”

3rd movement Facsar: The title is a Hungarian verb meaning “to wrestle” or “to distort.” In Hungarian this word is also associated with the bitter sensation felt in the nose when one is about to cry. It is also a double-stopping movement, a type of measured dance with displaced twisted modulations: pseudo-tonal.

4th movement Presto con sordino: From a regular perpetuum mobile movement (just as in my harpsichord work Continuum) through polyrhythmic accentuation and the use of the contrasting character of the individual strings, partially concealed, illusionistic melodic fragments are gradually peeled away: more or less in the spirit of Mauritz Escher.

5th movement Lamento: Strict two-part writing mainly consisting of parallel seconds and sevenths. Indirect influence of various ethnic cultures; similar two-part writing in seconds is found in the Balkan area (Bulgaria, Macedonia, Istria), the Ivory Coast, and Melanesia (on the island of Manus).

6th movement Chaconne chromatique: Allusions to the famous Bach chaconne should not be expected! My sonata is much more unassuming, does not historicize and also cannot support monumental forms. I use the word chaconne in its original meaning: as a wild exuberant dance in strongly accentuated three-four time with an ostinato bassline.

—© György Ligeti, translation by Lindsay Gerbracht

KIRSTEN VOLNESS “Shima Enaga”

KIRSTEN VOLNESS (b. 1980) Shima Enaga (12’)

Shima Enaga is inspired by a subspecies of long-tailed tit native to Hokkaido, Japan—a small white bird so cute, fluffy, nimble, and ephemeral, it captivates the imagination. This fantasia for flutes, piano, and electronics explores various sound worlds like the agile flocks descending and moving on, finding time for nesting (so cozy, woven with spider thread and lichen, lined with hundreds of feathers), and connecting back to my first, childhood dreams of Japan, bestowed by my tiny Casio keyboard. Commissioned by flutist Amelia Lukas and pianist Yoko Greeney with funding from the Regional Arts and Culture Council.

—© Kirsten Volness

TRADITIONAL “Glimpses of Muqam Chebiyat”

TRADITIONAL Glimpses of Muqam Chebiyat (9’), Arr. Wu Man

I. Chebiyat Muqam – Muqaddima
II. Chebiyat Muqam – Third Dastan

After two decades of collaborating with the Kronos Quartet, I am finally beginning to understand Western string instruments. With the group’s encouragement and support, I was able to create these—my first works for string quartet.

Glimpses of Muqam Chebiyat is a two-movement suite which, taken with Two Chinese Paintings, resembles a set of portraits of traditional cultures from around China. In Chinese traditional music, instrumental pieces often have poetic titles to express their content and style. I decided to continue this tradition with this collection. The inspiration for these suites came from styles of traditional music in China familiar to me, including Uyghur Maqam of Xinjiang province, a pipa scale from the 9th century, and the Silk-and-Bamboo music, or teahouse music, from my hometown of Hangzhou.

Glimpses of Muqam Chebiyat is adapted from the Uyghur Muqam Chebiyat. In 2010, thanks to the Aga Khan Music Initiative, I had the opportunity to learn these pieces directly from the Uyghur musicians Abdullah Majnun and Sanubar Tursun.

I feel quite grateful to be able to bring these old styles of traditional music—Uyghur Muqam, Jiangnan Silk-and-Bamboo music, and ancient pipa music—into the repertoire of Western string ensembles. The left-hand portamento, or sliding, technique called for here is quite distinct from the types of expression found in Western music. I hope that audiences will come to better understand the richness and diversity of music from China through these stories.

I’d like to thank Kronos for their trust and encouragement, for letting me be a part of their Fifty for the Future project, and for giving me this opportunity to share my musical experiences with young string quartets around the world!

—© Wu Man

Glimpses of Muqam Chebiyat was commissioned for Kronos Fifty for the Future, a project of the Kronos Performing Arts Association. The score and parts are available for free at kronosquartet.org.

KIT ARMSTRONG “Études de dessin”

KIT ARMSTRONG (b. 1992) Études de dessin (5’)

For centuries, music and painting have been subject to aesthetic parallels and shared inspirations. When I think of painting, I see the art of drawing as not only its foundation, but its heartbeat. It was my wish in Études de dessin to translate the expression of drawing into the world of music.

Colour and texture often go together in music. This applies especially to the piano, whose potential is realised through creating acoustic illusions—that a note appears to lead to another, or that touch informs the character of a sound. It may even be the very disconnect between acoustic reality and perception that can elevate piano music to a magical experience. I am immediately reminded of ink drawings where, similarly, the dissociation from optical reality allows a paradoxical feeling of being closer to its essence.

Fundamental in both cases is the invitation to let technical details blossom, in the beholder’s imagination, into sentiments. A brushstroke becomes expressive not only through such attributes as smoothness and elegance; it may project intimations of character that are so abstract and yet so personal, as only a series of tones could otherwise do.

—© Kit Armstrong

GYÖRGY LIGETI “Musica Ricercata,” No. 7

GYÖRGY LIGETI Musica Ricercata, No. 7 (5’)

If you had to re-start music history from scratch, what music would you write? How many notes would you use? What rhythms?

These are the sorts of base-level questions that Hungarian composer György Ligeti (1923–2006) sought to explore in his 1953 Musica Ricercata (Researched Music). Each of these 11 pieces for solo piano uses only a limited number of pitches, from two in the first piece to 12 in the last. By restricting his musical building blocks, he hoped to “evolve” a new style from the ground up, without reference to anything that came before.

Accordingly, Musica Ricercata, No. 7, only includes eight unique pitches. Five of them occur in the left hand’s ostinato (repeated) melody, performed “evenly, without any accent and independently of the right hand’s rhythm.” Meanwhile, the right hand explores the contours of a rough, folklike melody. Each performance should be unlike any other, as the two melodies come together and apart in spontaneous, unexpected ways.

—© Ethan Allred

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