NOTES encompassing view of humanity and cosmology, his fluid, improvisational style took inspiration from anything and everything: the inner workings of the human mind, a lover’s quarrel, a rose, wartime atrocities, and also music—indeed, many of his works bear musical titles, titles like Contrepoint de la Lumiere, Intégrale du Silence, La Flûte de Feu, Melodia-Melodio. Apropos of his interest in music, in one of his notebooks he writes, “Perhaps music is a utopian creation that proves the possibility of an orchestral harmonicity, a society of human beings.” In this new work for Ms. Nonken, entitled Le Pianiste, I chose three of Matta’s canvases as objects of contemplation from which to work, their titles: Les arpèges, Mi fa sol al mura, and Glisser du vent. In the resulting three pieces, the goal is not to attempt some kind of musical “translation” of Matta’s works, but to use them as a point of departure, formal, textural, technical, affectual, for making audible the energies they inspire in my own imagination. —R.F. Richard Beaudoin’s most recent works involve microtiming data from the acoustic microscope developed by Dr. Olivier Senn at the Hochschule, Lucerne, Switzerland. These works, called Études d’un prélude, pioneer a new compositional technique called photorealism. The Royal Academy of Music, London, is holding a research event devoted to these works in March 2010. Premieres and recordings of several of the works in the series are scheduled in Europe and America during the coming year. Beaudoin’s latest vocal work, Nach-Fragen, was premiered by Annette Dasch and Wolfram Rieger at the Wiener Konzerthaus, the Konzerthaus Dortmund, and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw in March 2009. He currently holds the position of lecturer on music at Harvard University. Chopin desséché is the first in a series of pieces inaugurating a new compositional process called photorealism. The source material is Martha Argerich’s 1975 recording of Chopin’s Prelude in E Minor, op. 28, no. 4. The work uses microtiming data generated by the acoustic microscope at the Hochschule, Lucerne, Switzerland. Black Wires is the fourth in the series of works inaugurating the photorealistic method. It takes its name from a passage describing a child’s view from out the window of a moving train in Nabokov’s 1948 story “First Love”: The door of the compartment was open and I could see the corridor window, where the wires—six thin black wires—were doing their best to slant up, to ascend skyward, despite the lightning blows dealt them by one telegraph pole after another; but just as all six, in a triumphant swoop of pathetic elation, were about to reach the top of the window, a particularly vicious blow would bring them down, as low as they had ever been, and they would have to start all over again. ABOUT THE ARTIST Marilyn Nonken is one of the most celebrated champions of the contemporary repertoire, known for performances that explore transcendent virtuosity and extremes of musical expression. She has been presented at such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Miller Theatre, the Guggenheim Museum, IRCAM, the Theâtre Bouffe du Nord, the ABC (Australia), Rockefeller Foundation, Kettle’s Yard, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Phillips Collection, and the Menil Collection, as well as at conservatories and universities around the world. Major composers who have written for her include Milton Babbitt, Pascal Dusapin, Michael Finnissy, Tristan Murail, and David Rakowski, and she has worked extensively with emerging Americans, including Drew Baker and Jason Eckardt. As a chamber musician, she plays with Ensemble 21 (the new music group of which she is artistic director and a co-founder) and the ELISION ensemble. She has also appeared with the Group for Contemporary Music, MusicNOW (Chicago Symphony), the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Speculum Musicae, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Festival appearances include Résonances and Festival d’Automne (both in Paris); When Morty Met John, Making Music, and Works and Process (all in New York); the Festival of New American Music (Sacramento); Musica Nova (Helsinki); Aspects des Musiques d’Aujourd-hui (Caën, France); Messiaen 2008 (Birmingham, England); New Music Days (Ostrava, Czech Republic); Musikhøst (Odense, Denmark); Music on the Edge (Pittsburgh), Piano Festival Northwest (Portland), and the William Kapell International Piano Festival and Competition. Nonken has recorded for New World, Mode, Lovely Music, Albany, Metier, Divine Art, Innova, CRI, BMOP Sound, New Focus, Cairos, Tzadik, and Bridge. Solo discs include American Spiritual, a CD of works written for her, Morton Feldman: Triadic Memories, and Tristan Murail: The Complete Piano Music. Recent releases include portrait discs of Chris Dench, William Albright, and Charles Wuorinen. Forthcoming CDs feature Brian Ferneyhough’s La Chute d’Icare and Les Froissements des Ailes de Gabriel (with ELISION), Roger Reynolds’s piano concerto The Angel of Death, Olivier Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen (with Sarah Rothenberg), and solo piano works by emerging American David Laganella. A student of new music pioneer David Burge at the Eastman School, Nonken received a doctoral degree in musicology from Columbia University. Currently director of piano studies at New York University’s Steinhardt School, Nonken is a Steinway Artist. She lives in New York with her husband, theatre artist George Hunka, and their daughter Goldie Celeste. Noon Concert Marilyn Nonken, piano PROGRAM Études David Rakowski F This * (No. 82, 2007) (b. 1958) Solid Goldie * (No. 90, 2009) Ménage à droit (No. 61, 2004) M’Aidez (No. 83, 2008) organum let open * (2009) Elizabeth Hoffman (b. 1961) Le Pianiste (2008–09) Richard Festinger Les arpèges (b. 1948) Mi fa sol al mura Glisser du vent Étude d’un prélude I – Chopin desséché * (2009) Richard Beaudoin (b. 1975) Étude d’un prélude IV – Black Wires * (2009) Beaudoin *world premiere 12:05 pm, Thursday, 12 November 2009 Room 115, Music Building This concert is being recorded professionally for the university archive. Please remain seated during the music, remembering that distractions will be audible on the recording. Please deactivate cell phones, pagers, and wristwatches. Flash photography and audio and video recording are prohibited during the performance. This performance is made possible in part by the generous support from the Joy S. Shinkoskey Series of Noon Concerts endowment. NOTES David Rakowski is a failed trombonist and never was much of a pianist. He grew up in Vermont, where he played in community bands and in a mediocre rock band called the Silver Finger. He studied composition at the New England Conservatory, Tanglewood, and Princeton, where his teachers included Robert Ceely, John Heiss, Milton Babbitt, Peter Westergaard, Paul Lansky, and Luciano Berio. He has written three symphonies, five concertos (one of them for Marilyn Nonken), three big wind ensemble pieces, and a substantial amount of chamber, vocal, and children’s music. His most widely traveled music is his soon-to-be-finished set of piano études, begun in 1988 and currently numbering 93, with seven to go. He has been recognized with the Rome Prize, the Barlow Prize, the Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as by the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Fromm Foundation, and several artist colonies. He has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize twice: in 1999 for Persistent Memory, commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and in 2002 for Ten of a Kind, commissioned by the U.S. Marine Band. His music is recorded on Bridge, BMOP/Sound CRI/New World, Innova, Albany, and Capstone and is published by CF Peters New York. He is the Walter W. Naumburg Professor, Brandeis University, and has also held faculty positions at Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, and the New England Conservatory. He lives in Massachusetts and Maine with his wife Beth Wiemann and two cats named Sunset and Camden. Two of the piano études on this concert were written for Marilyn. F This began as a query to Marilyn about piano pieces that use only one note, which was relayed by her to me and by me to Ken Ueno. When we came up empty, Ken dared me to write the first one. F This is the result of the gauntlet thrown. The piece uses only the F below middle C, played normally, stopped, and plucked, with various pedal shadings and short rhythmic figures subjected to metric modulations. In the end, it turns into a piece about shifting piano colors. Naturally, the piece is dedicated to Marilyn and Ken. Solid Goldie was a suggestion by Marilyn to celebrate the birth of her daughter, Goldie Celeste Hunka, and the figure G-C-H (G-C-B natural) for her initials is repeated endlessly on top of various processes—mostly of subtracting notes from successive iterations of accompaniment figures. Ménage à droit is a right-hand étude that was written to cheer up Amy Briggs when she had tendonitis in her left hand. The title came from Rick Moody. In this piece, fast notes that decorate a slower line eventually morph into “jazzier” figures, and return. M’Aidez was requested by Nathanael May, and the title is a pun on his name (May Day = M’aidez). He had asked for an étude alternating what he called “undulatory,” stuck piano figures with arpeggio figures that escape. —D.R. Elizabeth Hoffman composes acoustic and electroacoustic music (the latter since the early 1990s and study with Bülent Arel at Stony Brook and with Diane Thome and Richard Karpen at the University of Washington). Hoffman currently is a faculty member at New York University (Faculty of Arts and Science [FAS]), where she founded and directs the Washington Square Computer Music Studio.