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CHAN 9915 front.qxd 15/5/07 5:17 pm Page 1 CHANDOS CHAN 9915 CHAN 9915 BOOK.qxd 15/5/07 5:18 pm Page 2 Gerard Schurmann (b. 1924) Concerto for Orchestra 31:59 1 1 Summa Ferri. Allegro – Doppio meno – Tempo I 8:07 2 2 Moonbird. Andante 7:07 3 3 A Spirit in Mourning. Tempo giusto 5:27 4 4 Aubade. Allegretto 4:27 5 5 Le Grand Concert. Allegro vivace 6:33 Milein Cosman Concerto for Violin and Orchestra* 32:55 6 I Sostenuto – Allegro non troppo – Più mosso – Cadenza – Allegro non troppo 17:36 7 II [Theme.] Lento tranquillo – [Variation I.] Poco meno lento – [Variation II.] Poco più tranquillo – [Variation III.] Andante – [Variation IV.] Presto – [Variation V.] Tempo primo – [Variation VI.] Sostenuto – [Variation VII.] Allegro non troppo – Più mosso 15:11 TT 65:03 Olivier Charlier violin* BBC Philharmonic Yuri Torchinsky leader Gerard Schurmann Gerard Schurmann 3 CHAN 9915 BOOK.qxd 15/5/07 5:18 pm Page 4 imagine a genuinely dodecaphonic violin them; it is a sonority, Schurmann says, which is Schurmann: Violin Concerto/Concerto for Orchestra concerto. The only problematic thing about the quintessentially violinistic. Gamelan-like chords Berg Concerto is its instrumentation: the on glockenspiel, vibraphone, celesta and harp conductor has to mark down the dynamics seem to restrain the progress of the soloist, The composer-conductor Gerard Schurmann is Schurmann was introduced to the violinist by half before he begins. The Bartók, however although one can hear the rest of the as international a figure as recent music Ruggiero Ricci in 1974 by their mutual friend (one of the great concertos, I think1), is orchestra growing restless, and at the outset history can boast. He was born on 19 January John Ogdon, for whom Schurmann had written superbly orchestrated, and I learned a lot from of the Allegro the violin assertively articulates, 1924 in Java, then part of the Dutch East his Piano Concerto in 1972–3. The studying it. and then inverts, a note row, each time Indies, where his Dutch father ran a sugar subsequent discussions with Ricci led to Schurmann’s experience on the podium can obtaining the chordal assent of the strings. plantation; his mother, the daughter of Schurmann’s Concerto for Violin and be seen in the care with which he plots the The movement proceeds in a state of Hungarian parents who settled in The Orchestra, written to celebrate Ricci’s golden relationship between orchestra and soloist, continuous development, gradually evolving Netherlands, had studied piano with Bartók jubilee on the concert platform in 1978; it who never has to shout to be heard above an away from the opening material. The solo part, in Budapest. With the growing threat of war was premiered in Liverpool on 26 September, orchestral tutti. Instead the violin is of course, was written for one of the world’s in the Far East, Schurmann volunteered in with Ricci as soloist. accompanied by choirs of instrumental leading virtuosos and Schurmann keeps him 1941 for active wartime flying duty in Before getting down to the work of colours: here the strings, there the woodwind, active almost all the time, though he never England, where he joined 320 Squadron of composition Schurmann thought at length brass, or tuned percussion with celesta and forgets that the violin’s principal calling is to the Royal Air Force, part of Coastal Command. about the problems of orchestral balance harp – even the overlap of two of these sing. The soloist’s reward comes in an Even before he was demobilised in 1946 he posed by a violin concerto; indeed, it took him groups is rare, and generally confined to extended cadenza at the end of the first had appeared in public (and in uniform) as a four years to complete the work. Three earlier chordal adjuncts to linear developments movement but even here there are no piano recitalist and soloist. In 1945 he twentieth-century exemplars suggested paths elsewhere in the orchestra. fireworks for their own sake. Elegiac violas became acting cultural attaché to The to follow, and to avoid: The concerto is divided into two introduce the coda, the soloist continuing Netherlands’ Embassy in London (Dutch is his Schoenberg produced a distinguished failure, I movements, the first with an introductory as if unaware that the cadenza has come to mother tongue), and in 1948 he took up the feel. The actual music of his Concerto is Sostenuto leading to a symphonic Allegro non an end. An emphatic statement of the position of resident conductor with the Dutch marvellous, and I admire it enormously. But it troppo, the second a theme with seven germinal cell at its current state of radio in Hilversum for two years, initiating a seems totally miscast for the violin. I’ve conducted variations. The first movement avoids development gains the approbation of the distinguished conducting career which he it – for radio, which makes it easier – but in a conventional sonata form; instead it strings once more and the movement comes pursued alongside his composition studies concert performance one can’t help but notice germinates ideas and thematic material which to a close. with Alan Rawsthorne. Although Schurmann that it’s in the very nature of the violin that it are pulled into the weft and developed as the The second movement works back towards had been living in Britain ever since his needs to be flattered, and almost essentially this music proceeds. One important idea is posited the material which opened the concerto. The return from The Netherlands, he was to move must be a tonal kind of flattery. Berg accepted in the violin almost immediately, in the second gentle theme, Lento tranquillo, is presented again in 1981, at the age of fifty-seven, to that, and the note-row of his Concerto is bar: a simple three-note shape – D, F sharp, E, with hushed support from strings and harp. Los Angeles. completely tonal, built of triads. I can’t really with a D harmonic sounded below each of Variation I (the subdivisions are not marked in 4 5 CHAN 9915 BOOK.qxd 15/5/07 5:18 pm Page 6 the score), Poco meno lento, introduces the Schurmann’s Concerto for Orchestra was The idea for the first movement, Summa Ferri (the previous four movements are re-worked and woodwind; Variation II, Poco più tranquillo, commissioned by Lorin Maazel and the gist, or heart of iron), suggested itself after a framed in altered contexts, keeping the whole thickens the orchestration further with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra as part of that friend had sent me a copiously illustrated book orchestra well-occupied throughout. advent of the brass, the violin soaring orchestra’s centenary season in 1996; the about Pittsburgh, The Story of an American City beautifully overhead. Variation III, Andante, work’s first performances were conducted by by Stefan Lorant. It contained reproductions of © 2002 Martin Anderson brings a jaunty figure on the bassoon, which, Edo de Waart. Schurmann had something to some Piranesi-like engravings of steel mill 1 deliberately or otherwise, recalls the opening celebrate himself – his year-long recovery from interiors, depicting a hive of industry. These were Schurmann is referring to the Second Violin Concerto of 1937–8; Bartók’s First Concerto, of 1907– 8, was of Britten’s Violin Concerto, where a very prostate cancer – and the frenetic exuberance in sharp contrast to exterior views showing a very not rediscovered until 1956, among the effects of similar phrase is heard on the timpani right at of the opening and final movements may well peaceful rural setting. The fortissimo chords of Stefi Geyer, for whom it had been composed; it was the outset. The full orchestra now sings a stand as a cipher for his fierce joy at finding the opening, together with their lyrical antitheses, premiered in 1958 and took a while to enter the melody that suggests the gamelan ensembles himself back in rude health. are destined to form the main building blocks of repertoire. of Schurmann’s East Indian childhood, and the Schurmann admits honestly that his the work. violin joins in; the ‘Britten’ figure moves to the Concerto for Orchestra was composed in the The Moonbird is an exotic, large creature of Already a prize-winner at the age of fourteen, timpani, uniting the composer’s native and shadow of Bartók’s, to which here and there the night, both majestic and a little lugubrious Olivier Charlier studied with Pierre Doukan at adoptive countries. The ensuing Presto, he pays tribute with deliberate hints of [the image is inspired by Joan Miró’s Woman, Bird the Paris Conservatoire where his precocious Variation IV, sends the soloist rocketing along Bartók in the scoring. The sound of the by Moonlight]. Its hypnotic demeanour and, at gift caught the attention of Henryk Szeryng, in unceasing triplets, the tuned percussion gamelan is there, too, along with a new times, ecstatic pursuit of its prey are reminiscent Nadia Boulanger and Sir Yehudi Menuhin. chiming in calmly from the side. Another broad tone in Schurmann’s music, an explicitly of a gigantic owl, but the Moonbird is less agile From a very early age he was entering the gamelan melody brings in Variation V, Tempo American quality in the orchestration, heard in flight due to a limited wingspan in relation to most prestigious international violin primo, and a memory of the theme, as tender especially in the writing for strings and brass. its oversized body. competitions with great success. He has as when first encountered – perhaps to point The first, third and last movements – ‘Summa In the third movement, thoughts of war lead to performed internationally as soloist with many us backwards, for in Variation VI, Sostenuto, Ferri’, ‘A Spirit in Mourning’ and ‘Le Grand tragic and somewhat ghostly manifestations of an orchestras including the BBC Philharmonic, the three-note phrase from the very opening of Concert’ – also employ a system based on a unquiet spirit.