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NEW MUSIC DUBLIN 2017 THURSDAY 2 MARCH 2017, 7.30PM NEW MUSIC DUBLIN 2017 THURSDAY 2 MARCH Gerald Barry and Thomas Adès piano Crash Ensemble Timothy Redmond conductor PROGRAMME Gerald Barry Five Chorales from The Intelligence Park (1985) (T. Adès/G. Barry, piano duet) 1. Fathers Beget 2. Nature Inanimate 3. Pallid The Sun 4. White Bird Featherless 5. Cries From Haunted Cottages To a libretto by Vincent Deane, The Intelligence Park is a tragic comedy of obsession, jail, an eclipse of the sun, and requited love. It was staged at the 1990 Almeida Festival in London, The Gate Theatre in Dublin, and at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. A BBC recording has been issued on the NMC label. Thomas Adès Mazurkas (2009) The world premiere of Thomas Ades’s Mazurkas took place at Carnegie Hall in New York on 2 February 2010 performed by pianist Emanuel Ax. This was followed by the UK premiere at the Barbican in London on 5 March and in The Netherlands at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam shortly after on 7 March 2010. After its US premiere Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times wrote: ‘Contrasting three Chopin mazurkas, elegantly played, with the premiere of Three Mazurkas, Op. 27, by the British composer Thomas Adès was a great idea. Mr. Adès, an accomplished pianist, pays tribute to Chopin by writing modern-day, harmonically spiky, rhythmically fractured mazurkas that imaginatively span the keyboard. In the second, he evokes the practice of rubato (in which strict timing is toyed with) by having the left hand play a steady rhythmic figure while the right spins out a spiralling, trill-filled wash of notes.’ Mazurkas was co-commissioned by the Barbican Centre, Carnegie Hall, Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, San Francisco Symphony and Het Concertgebouw NV. Gerald Barry Octet (1995) ‘The Octet was written for the Icebreaker Ensemble. It is made up of melodies with a storm. A recurring refrain quotes a passage from my vocal/orchestral piece, The Conquest of Ireland, set to a text by Giraldus de Barri’: “Hervey was tall and handsome with prominent grey eyes, an agreeable presence, charming features, an elegant way of speaking. His neck was smooth, long and straight, forming a sturdy pillar on which his head rested. He was roundshouldered, his arms and hands long and elegant, and his chest moderately broad. But his waist which in most people tends to swell out immoderately, was by nature of modest proportions, and lower down towards his abdomen attained a size in keeping with that of his chest.” NEW MUSIC DUBLIN 2017 THURSDAY 2 MARCH Gerald Barry Lisbon for piano and ensemble (2005) (Irish Premiere) Lisbon was commissioned by the Nieuw Ensemble of Amsterdam for their 25th Anniversary and premiered in Tilburg, Holland in 2006. After deciding on the music in late autumn 2005 I visited Lisbon for the first time in early December. The light and whiteness caused me to radically change the mood of the music on my return to Dublin. Stephen Gardner Jerk (world premiere) The main inspiration for this piece was the desire to write for Crash Ensemble again. I had the amplification aspect in mind. This yields a different sonic approach e.g. the trombone can find its balance easily, due to the mixing desk. The title refers to the jerky nature of most of the music. It has a spiky flow to it, with precise rhythmic interaction. Hopefully, it all binds together into a propulsive movement. Thomas Adès Living Toys (Irish premiere) Living Toys, written for chamber music ensemble, was commissioned by the Arts Council of Great Britain for the London Sinfonietta. It had its first performance on 11th February 1994 in the Barbican Hall, London with London Sinfonietta and Oliver Knussen. ‘Thomas Adès is unmistakably embarked on a brilliant career… he impresses effortlessly and the music he writes has rare and tautly disciplined imagination… Living Toys, a Sinfonietta commission, proved a remarkable essay. It is remarkable for its intricate facture (it is notated with meticulous yet never over-fussy precision; for its bizarrely effective scoring; and for its crabbed but powerful coherence of form…The work had a wonderfully dense, dynamic impact.’ The Sunday Times (Paul Driver), 20 February 1994 ‘…an overwhelming onslaught of invention…Like Strauss, Mr Adès can weave disparate materials into an entrancing musical story.’ The New York Times (Alex Ross), 25 November 1995 NEW MUSIC DUBLIN 2017 THURSDAY 2 MARCH BIOGRAPHIES Gerald Barry composer Gerald Barry was born in Co Clare in 1952. His first opera,The Intelligence Park (recorded on NMC), was commissioned by the ICA and first performed at the 1990 Almeida Festival. A second opera, The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit, written for Channel 4 Television, opened the 2002 Aldeburgh Festival, followed by performances in London and the Berliner Festwochen conducted by Thomas Adès. A new staging took place in 2013 at the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant was given in 2005 at English National Opera and in 2008 at the Basle Opera. La Plus Forte, a one-act opera on the Strindberg play, was commissioned by Radio France for the 2007 Festival Presences. Sung by Barbara Hannigan, it toured to Amsterdam, London, Dublin, Miami and Toronto. The RTÉ recording of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant has been rereleased on the Discovery label. Recent chamber works include The Destruction of Sodom for 8 horns and 2 wind machines. His most recent opera, The Importance of Being Earnest, was jointly commissioned by the LA Philharmonic and the Barbican in London, and received its world premiere staging at Opera national de Lorraine – Nancy in 2013. Two further productions were staged the same year at the Royal Opera House Linbury Theatre, and on tour with NI Opera. In 2016 the ROH stagings of Earnest were revived in London with the Britten Sinfonia and in New York with the New York Philharmonic. Earnest received a 2013 Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Large-Scale Composition and a recording was released on NMC and nominated for a Grammy. His opera, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, was premiered in Los Angeles by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and in London by the Britten Sinfonia in 2016 and recorded by the BBC. Thomas Adés composer, conductor, pianist Born in London in 1971, Thomas Adès studied piano at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and read music at King’s College, Cambridge. A prodigious composer, conductor and pianist, Adès was described by The New York Times as one of today’s ‘most accomplished overall musicians.’ Adès’s first opera,Powder Her Face (1995) has been performed worldwide whilst his second, The Tempest, was commissioned by London’s Royal Opera House and was premiered under the baton of the composer to great critical acclaim in 2004. It was revived in 2007 and has since had several performances elsewhere, including the Metropolitan Opera New York where it was recorded for a Deutsche Grammophon DVD which subsequently won a Grammy Award. Current projects include a third opera, based on Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel which premieres at the Salzburg Festival in July. Adès’s many musical advocates include Sir Simon Rattle who performed Asyla (1997) at his final concert with the CBSO and his first as Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic, and Tevot with the Berlin Philharmonic in 2007. In 2011 the orchestral work Polaris was premiered by the New World Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas in Miami and has since been choreographed by Crystal Pite. Adès’s Totentanz for mezzo-soprano, baritone and large orchestra was premiered at the 2013 Proms by the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Adès has won numerous awards, including the 2015 Léonie Sonning Music Prize and the prestigious Grawemeyer Award (2000), of which he is the youngest ever recipient. Adès was Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival from 1999 to 2008 and coaches piano and chamber music annually at the International Musicians Seminar, Prussia Cove. NEW MUSIC DUBLIN 2017 THURSDAY 2 MARCH Timothy Redmond conductor Redmond conducts and presents concerts throughout Europe. He is a regular guest conductor with the London Symphony and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras and he works with many of the leading British and European orchestras. He has given concerts in the UK with the Philharmonia, Royal Northern Sinfonia and London Philharmonic Orchestra, with the BBC Concert, Philharmonic and Symphony Orchestras, with the Hallé, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Ulster Orchestras, and has a long-standing association with the Manchester Camerata. He has conducted widely throughout Europe and the US with orchestras including the St Louis Symphony, Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana and the Rotterdam Philharmonic. Timothy Redmond is well-known as a conductor of contemporary music and has a particular association with the music of Thomas Adès. Since working closely with the composer for the premiere of The Tempest at Covent Garden, he has conducted critically-acclaimed productions of Powder Her Face for English National Opera, the Royal Opera House and St Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre. He recently gave the Hungarian premiere of Totentanz and assisted the composer for the New York premiere of The Tempest at the Metropolitan Opera. Recent highlights have included premieres of works by Edward Rushton and Peter Maxwell Davies with the LSO, debuts with orchestras in Canada, Romania and Serbia, a tour to China with the RPO, Henze and Martinu˚ double-bills for the Guildhall School and the 2014 LSO BMW Open Air Classics concert at which he conducted for 10,000 people in Trafalgar Square. Crash Ensemble Crash Ensemble is Ireland’s leading new music ensemble; a group of world-class musicians who play the most adventurous, ground-breaking music of today.

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