Marsyas Trio
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MARSYAS TRIO 2 1 Thea Musgrave Canta, Canta! (1997) 3’44 In the Theatre of Air for alto fl ute, cello and piano (orig. cl/vc/pn) Judith Weir Several Concertos (1980) 2 Concerto for Violoncello 5’36 3 Concerto for Pianoforte 5’56 4 Concerto for Piccolo 3’19 5 Georgia Rodgers York Minster (2018) 5’25 Hilary Tann In the Theater of Air (2017) 6 Herons 1’29 7 Goldfi nches 1’41 8 Thrushes 1’41 9 Wild Geese 2’14 bl Hawk 2’25 bm White Owl 1’31 bn Starlings 4’50 Laura Bowler Salutem (2014) bo Stone Age 3’23 bp Bronze Age 3’06 bq The Middle Ages 2’56 br Industrial Revolution 3’07 bs Modern Age 4’03 Marsyas Trio Amy Beach Two Pieces for Flute, Cello and Piano, Op. 90 (1921) bt Pastorale 3’31 Zubin Kanga piano bu Caprice, ‘Water Sprites’ 0’58 Helen Vidovich fl ute, alto fl ute, piccolo Valerie Welbanks cello Total timing 60’54 photo © Marshall Light Studio Studio Light © Marshall photo 3 Notes by Heather Roche As women composers and performers in of contemporary classical music that we the West, we no longer have to fi ght to lack political agency, the Marsyas Trio The year 2018 marks the 100th track’ accompanying the otherwise British be able to do the things we want to do make full use of theirs. anniversary of (some) women getting the lineup, with her modern-day equivalents. in the ways that Beach did. But we still Thea Musgrave’s Canta, Canta! vote in the UK, and is celebrated with this She was, early in life, recognised as fi ght for those things to be recognised appears here as an arrangement of an release by the Marsyas Trio, featuring one of the fi nest pianists in the United on equal terms: we want to be paid arrangement: the trio, Canta, Canta!, was works by fi ve living British composers and States, and performed as a soloist with equally, we want to be able to choose originally for clarinet, cello and piano, one notable American. the Boston Symphony Orchestra at a to have families without sacrifi cing our and Marsyas fl autist Helen Vidovich time when she could neither vote, nor creativity and careers, and we want to 1918 marked a milestone in the feminist attend Harvard. However, following her worked together with Musgrave to create movement, and such milestones have see the work of women appear on every marriage in 1885 she was restricted to this version, with alto fl ute replacing the been since framed in terms of ‘waves’. concert programme. Women composers two performances a year, an order she clarinet. The trio itself is an arrangement The fi rst wave was primarily concerned are still underrepresented, largely obeyed until the death of her husband made by the composer in 1997 of a song with the vote. Three have followed, and ignored by orchestral programming, in 1910, when she resumed touring. from her own A Cantata for a Summer’s we are now arguably in the middle of the often discouraged from engaging with She was, however, encouraged by Day, written in 1954 for chorus and fourth, which is concerned chiefl y not technology, and regularly reminded her husband to continue composing chamber orchestra, commissioned by with the individual but with structural that their ambition is seen as ugly and during their marriage, and in general BBC Scotland and dedicated to the defi ciencies within society, and with the ‘unfeminine’. he encouraged her towards larger form memory of Lili Boulanger. The song need to speak out following the defeat of works and away from the songs that The Marsyas Trio celebrate the important arranged in Canta, Canta! is a setting of a Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US Presidential had mostly comprised her portfolio anniversary of women’s suffrage by poem by Maurice Lindsay (a friend of the election and what has been seen as a hitherto. She could not, as her male presenting works by women composers of composer and her regular collaborator gradual retrenchment on women’s rights. counterparts did, travel to Europe for multiple generations while acknowledging until his death in 2009), describing the We have, however, come a long way. It formal instruction; instead, she studied, that we are still not done. ‘Deeds not orange tiger lily burning bright in the hot is extraordinary to compare the life of copying and memorizing, the scores of Words’ ran the motto of the Women’s summer sun. This arrangement retains Amy Beach, the earliest composer to be orchestral pieces she heard performed by Social and Political Union (WSPU), the vocal colour of the original, the drama featured on this release, and presented the Boston Symphony Orchestra. and here is an album as deed: while and lyricism being passed between alto on this album as an American ‘bonus sometimes we may feel within the realm fl ute and cello lines. 64 75 Judith Weir’s Several Concertos was Georgia Rodgers’ York Minster, seven times, with one note removed from Tann uses a mix of playing techniques to commissioned by the ensemble Lontano commissioned by the Marsyas Trio, is the material on each repeat. express the movement of the birds, and in 1980. There are a few ‘fi rsts’ for part of a series of pieces, called Real structurally the piece resembles a wave, Welsh composer Hilary Tann mixes women associated with the work. Most Spaces, that explores the harmonic starting with the stillness of the herons, the musical and the visual in her piece, frequencies of resonant spaces. She moving towards tension and activity with recently, Weir has become the fi rst In the Theater of Air, commissioned by refers to these frequencies as the space’s the thrushes, wild geese and hawk, and woman to be made Master of the Queen’s the Marsyas Trio. It is not birdsong that ‘acoustic fi ngerprint’ and, in addition to fi nally the wave breaks with the white owl Music. In addition, Odaline de la Martinez, is the inspiration here, but the poetic York Minster, has also made pieces based and starlings. the fi rst woman to conduct at the Proms, description of seven different kinds of on St. Andrew’s Church at Lyddington in was the pianist in Lontano when the birds in movement. In order of their Laura Bowler’s Salutem was Rutland, and Maeshowe, a Neolithic tomb work was commissioned. Weir herself appearance in the piece, the birds are commissioned by the Marsyas Trio as in the Orkney Islands. The pitch material describes the piece as an ‘early curiosity’, Herons (‘in the black, polished water’), a partner piece to George Crumb’s Vox for the piece is derived from the acoustic a ‘sort of jeu d’esprit about late 1970s Goldfi nches (‘they swing on the thistles’), Balaenae, which lies at the core of the fi ngerprint of York Minster: a kind of complexity crashing into the concerto Thrushes (‘upward like rain, rising’), Marsyas Trio’s existing repertoire. Five modal scale is extracted by analysis manners of the traditional concert hall’. Wild Geese (‘high in the clean blue air’), movements of the Crumb are named of the impulse response of the space, Each of the three movements features Hawk (‘eyes fastened harder than love’), after geologic time periods: Archeozoic, with pitches at 71, 177, 335, 401, 284, one of the instrumentalists as soloist, White Owl (‘a buddha with wings’), and Proterozoic, Paleozoic, Mesozoic 354, 670 and 802 Hertz. These pitches Starlings (‘like one stippled star’). The and Cenozoic. Bowler extends these fi rst a concerto for Violoncello, then are converted into their nearest equally for Pianoforte and fi nally for Piccolo. text accompanying each bird comes from through the ages of humankind in fi ve tempered notes with cent deviation and the American poet Mary Oliver (hence movements: Stone Age, Bronze Age, The While each movement features a used extensively (but not exclusively) in the American spelling of the title) and her Middle Ages, Industrial Revolution and soloist — the violoncello solo full of the composition of the work. Structurally, collection Wild Geese. Once described Modern Age. Bowler makes extensive dramatic portamenti, the pianoforte solo the piece resembles Alvin Lucier’s as the ‘indefatigable guide to the natural use of extended playing techniques, rampant with intricate passage work, I am sitting in a room, in which the text world’, Oliver’s poems relate the human the voices (and screams!) of the low rumblings and violent clusters, and is recorded and played multiple times condition to nature; we are human, but instrumentalists, amplifi cation, auxiliary the piccolo solo one of lyrical gymnastics on the course of the piece, resulting in also animal. As she writes, ‘You only have instruments (a mortar and pestle in the between registers — the work remains gradual unintelligibility of the text. In the to let the soft animal of your body/love Stone Age, crotales in the Bronze age, virtuosic for all players throughout. Rodgers, the same music is repeated what it loves’. and wood and metal in the Industrial 86 7 Revolution) improvisation, and sampled and hints at the strength of Beach’s Rich and powerful musical language Judith Weir (b. 1954 to Scottish music. The piece is also theatrical: powers of orchestration. The Caprice and a strong sense of drama have made parents in Cambridge, England) studied players are instructed to play each other’s ‘Water Sprites’, not even a minute long, Scottish-American composer Thea composition with John Tavener, Robin instruments, take selfi es and shout.