Our September Slee Sinfonietta concert was a great success and enjoyed a huge turnout, and received a very thoughtful write-up in the
Buffalo News by Daniel J. Kushner. We’re already gearing up for the second Fall
Slee Sinfonieta concert, which will take place on Tuesday, October 30, at 7:30
p.m., in Lippes Concert Hall. Maestro Daniel Bassin will be conducting some of
the most seminal works of 20th century chamber music, and will be joined
by violinist Yuki Numata, hornist Adam Unsworth, and pianist Eric Huebner.
Program:
 |
| Daniel Bassin conducting David Rappenecker's Emergence |
Morton Feldman - De
Kooning
György Ligeti - Trio
for horn, violin and piano
--- intermission ---
Pierre Boulez – Notations
8, 3, 9
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Kreuzspiel
Tristan Murail - Vues
aeriennes
Witold Lutosławski - Dance
Preludes
We sat down with Daniel Bassin and asked him about the
program, how the pieces fit together, and if he could give us a sneak preview
of the music in store for us:
“They’re all major works, each and every one on the program, but the
biggest work is Ligeti’s Trio for horn, violin, and piano, which Ligeti
considered to be the first work of his late period, and which represents the
culmination of the musical ideas he had been working with during the late 60s
and 70s, and a maturation into a lyrical and autumnal style. On the other hand,
there is Stockhausen’s Kreuzspiel, which
Stockhausen said he considered to be his first true composition – he felt that
this was his first work that wasn’t a study or copying someone else’s style,
but was a true composition of his own. And we added to the program three of
Boulez’s twelve Notations, for piano,
written when Boulez was only 20 years old, but which present a nice context for
hearing the Stockhausen, in terms of the composers’ treatment of the piano, and
the techniques they employed related to total serialism. Bookending the concert
are pieces by Feldman and Lutoslawski, both of whom are experiencing something
of an anniversary – 2012 being the 25th anniversary of Feldman’s passing, and 2013 will be the 100th anniversary of Lutoslawski’s birth.*
“Morton Feldman’s De
Kooning is a piece of chamber music with the unique instrumental
combination of muted french horn, violin, cello, percussion (crotales, vibraphone, chimes, tenor
drum, and bass drum), and piano/celeste. It was originally written to accompany
a film on Feldman’s friend, the 20th century painter Willem de Kooning, created
by German-American director Hans Namuth. Feldman once remarked of de Kooning’s
work, that at first impression it seemed as if his canvases were painted
quickly, but when watching de Kooning paint, he saw that he was painstakingly
deliberate and slow, and I think the piece, in a way, mimics de Kooning's process. In Feldman’s composition, the individual instrumental
tones succeed one another without regard to metric pulse, but rather with a
cryptic instruction from the composer that each sound only begin when the
preceding one starts to fade away.
“The concert closes with the third version of Polish
composer Witold Lutoslawski’s Dance Preludes. The piece was originally written for
clarinet and piano, and was derived from Polish folk dances and melodies. In an
intervening version, Lutoslawski developed the work into a concertante version
featuring the clarinet as soloist, however, in this final version composed for
the group Czech Nonet, the composer treats the four string players and members
of the woodwind quintet equally, while creating chamber orchestral textures which
point forward to his more mature symphonic work.While the works in the program
by Stockhausen, Boulez, and Ligeti each mark important turning points in those
composer’s compositional output, it is with this final arrangement of the Dance
Preludes that Lutoslawski made the artistic decision to abandon the folk
arrangements and transcriptions that he had previously been compelled to write
as a Soviet-era composer.
“The concert will also feature the composition Vues Aeriennes, by a Darmstadt composer
from a later generation, Tristan Murail. In this work, the composer seeks to
depict an object – in reality a set of musical processes – in four different
qualities of light. Murail breaks it down into four movements: 1. morning light
(clear light, very obtuse angles, maximum distortion), 2. light in the rain (soft-focus
effect, softer angles, slighter distortion), 3. midday light (brilliant light,
frontal view, no distortion), and 4. evening light (warm light, long shadows,
heavy distortion). The horn player, throughout the four movements, travels an
arc across the stage – he begins off stage to the right, in the second movement
plays from stage right, in the third movement plays from center stage, and
finally concludes the work off stage left.”
We look forward to seeing you all there!
Tuesday, October 30, 2012, 7:30 pm
Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall
Daniel Bassin, conductor
Yuki Numata, violin
Adam Unsworth, horn
Eric Huebner, piano
Ticket information can be found here.
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