EL-KHOURY Orchestral Work Kept by the Composer As Part of His English Version by Keith Anderson Official Catalogue of Compositions
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557691bk USA 12/2/06 8:55 pm Page 4 dance rhythms that are as it were evocations in the score already shows the characteristics of later works, present of a past that has gone for ever. glittering orchestration, and free form based on Bechara The Poème for Orchestra, Op. 2, with the subtitle expressively contrasting episodes. Le Regard du Christ, composed in Paris in 1979, at the age of 22 and dedicated to his parents, is the earliest Gérald Hugon EL-KHOURY orchestral work kept by the composer as part of his English version by Keith Anderson official catalogue of compositions. In this work El- 1 The symphony Les Ruines de Beyrouth (The Ruins of Khoury wants to translate something of the mystical Beirut) of 1985 is the third panel of this triptych inspiration suggested by the look of Christ over life here (Naxos 8.557043). Requiem for Orchestra below. Written in the dark tonality of B minor, this Lebanon in Flames (Symphonic Poem) Orchestre Colonne In the Spring of 1873 the music publisher Georges Hartmann and a violinist from the Paris Opéra, Edouard Colonne, organized a series of concerts under the title of “Concert National” at the Théâtre de l’Odéon. The The Contemplation of Christ (Symphonic Poem) objective was clear, to bring French composers to the attention of a broad public. Edouard Colonne was the conductor and as such made a brilliant début. Despite his success, however, the financial cost of the undertaking forced Hartmann to withdraw his support. Strengthened by his personal success, Colonne founded his own Orchestre Colonne • Pierre Dervaux orchestra, the Association Artistique, which from November 1873 was housed in the Théâtre du Châtelet. The Concerts Colonne promoted the contemporary music of the time, featuring Berlioz, in particular La damnation de Faust, Saint-Saëns, Massenet, Fauré, D’Indy, Charpentier, Debussy, Widor, Dukas, Ravel, Chabrier and also Wagner and Richard Strauss. Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Grieg, Richard Strauss and Prokofiev all came to conduct their works at the Concerts Colonne. The Orchestre Colonne can proudly claim to have welcomed, since it was founded, the greatest conductors and, more recently, Sylvain Cambreling, Dennis Russel Davis, Michel Corboz, Kent Nagano, Mauricio Kagel, and Lovro von Mataãiç, among others. In 1910 Gabriel Pierné took over from Edouard Colonne and was in turn succeeded by Paul Paray in 1932, Charles Munch in 1956, and Pierre Dervaux in 1958 until 1992. Pierre Dervaux (1917-1992) Born in 1917 in Juvisy-sur-Orge near Paris, Pierre Dervaux studied piano, harmony and counterpoint at the Paris Conservatoire. Principal conductor of the Paris Opéra from 1947 to 1970 (where, in 1957, he directed the world première of Poulenc’s Dialogue des Carmélites), he returned in 1978 to conduct Carmen with Teresa Berganza and Placido Domingo. He served as Vice-President of the Concerts Pasdeloup from 1949 to 1955, Music Director of the Orchestre des Pays de la Loire from 1971 to 1979, of the Quebec Symphony Orchestra, and of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice until 1982, and has appeared as a guest conductor with a number of French and foreign orchestras. He has taught conducting at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris since 1964, and at the Montréal Conservatoire from 1965 to 1971. During the 1960s, Pierre Dervaux was appointed Musical Director of the Chicago Opera. He was President of the Orchestre Colonne from 1958 to 1992. 8.557691 4 557691bk USA 12/2/06 8:55 pm Page 2 Bechara El-Khoury (b.1957) against lighter textures that favour rather writing for upper strings, which marks, through its diatonic Orchestral Works solo instrumental sounds. In the latter the composer’s character, a serener contrast. The end of the work is taste for instruments that give romantic colour, such as starker in character. Bechara El-Khoury was born in Beirut in 1957 and cheap colouring. Without doubt he is one of those very the clarinet or the horn, is apparent. The second piece in the trilogy inspired by the started his musical studies in the Lebanon, before rare beings who knows how to reconcile the The Danse, Op. 9, with the subtitle Danse des tragedy of Lebanon, Requiem, Op. 18, dedicated to the moving in 1979 to Paris to complete his training with irreconcilable, without ever deviating from a line of aigles (Dance of the Eagles) is surely one of El- ‘Lebanese martyrs of the war’, was written in Beirut in Pierre-Petit, then Director of the Ecole Normale de conduct that leads him irresistibly from the shores of Khoury’s most brilliant and extravert pieces. Composed December 1980. The tonality of B flat minor gives the Musique. By the time he decided to settle in the French romanticism towards the most contemporary modes of in 1980, this miniature, with its rich orchestration, its work its funereal and tragic character. The introduction, capital, he already had a dual reputation as the composer expression.’ melismas in oriental colouring, and the wild character of one of the darkest passages by El-Khoury, brings a of some hundred works written between 1969 and 1978, El-Khoury brings back to the music of today the its rhythms, is in the direct tradition of Russian or phrase full of threatening and mournful chromaticism and as a poet, with several collections published from expression of personal feeling, of passion and of Armenian musicians such as Khachaturian. This work on the lower strings, trombones and tuba, while the 1971 onwards, in addition to his intensive activity as a emotion. In an interview with Bruno Serrou he said: fully deserves to be placed alongside the most famous entry of the horns and trumpets, over the scattered pianist, conductor, chorus-master, and as a writer of ‘I am an enthusiast for freedom and accept no and most spectacular symphonic dances of the twentieth outbursts from the bass drum, is stamped with articles in the press. An important concert of El- sectarianism. I write as I feel, while taking into account century. solemnity. The funeral lament begins when a tonic Khoury’s works was given in Paris on 9th December the evolution of the world. I refuse to break with the Dedicated to Pierre Dervaux, the Image pedal of B flat is heard from the lower strings and 1983 by the Orchestre Colonne under Pierre Dervaux past, which for me is a stimulus, an asset. Music ought symphonique, Op. 26, subtitled Les Dieux de la terre timpani. The principal theme, exceptionally long and with the collaboration of the pianist Abdel Rahman El- to be the reflection of human feelings and a universal (The Gods of the Earth), originates in a poem by Khalil the source of a number of later motifs, is then stated by Bacha, as part of the celebration of the centenary of language’. Sensible to the beauties as well as the Gibran. This score, composed in 1982, tends to use free violins and violas. The work then develops in a Khalil Gibran. Several of the works included here had miseries of the world, the composer realises one of his chromaticism, recalling in a way the language of succession of episodes with feelings that are sometimes their world première on this occasion, the Symphonic deepest convictions ‘to put into music human nature and Penderecki’s most recent works. Except in the extreme violent and dramatic, symbolizing the struggle against Poem No. 1: Lebanon in Flames, the Requiem: For the its passions’. The predominance of the narrative aspect parts of the work, the composer seems to abandon here despair, and sometimes reserved and turned inwards, Lebanese Martyrs in the War, the Symphonic Picture: in his works is at the origin of his preference for free the long dreamy periods that characterized his earlier marking resignation before the inescapable. Shortly The Gods of the Earth and the Symphonic Suite: Night form, proceeding rhapsodically in a succession of compositions. On the contrary he operates by touches before the end, a final eruption of revolt, marked and the Fool. In 1987 El-Khoury took out French contrasted sections, subject to the development of poetic and quickly contrasts dense orchestral textures with Patetico, in 5/4 metre, reveals a rich polyphonic citizenship. His works have been played by feeling. Even when he tackles traditional abstract forms others that are lighter, sometimes solo, symbolizing conception in chromatic and orchestral writing that distinguished orchestras, including the London such as the sonata, he never uses pre-established visions that clash against one another to a faster rhythm. suggests Scriabin. The work ends with a return of the Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National de France, patterns foreign to the vital impulse of his creative The surprising final bars, entrusted only to the brass, are funeral procession and the principal theme. the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, the Paris imagination. Up to his Opus 23 the technical means he like a Wagnerian reminiscence. The Poème symphonique No. 1, Op. 14, composed Orchestre Colonne, the National Symphony Orchestra uses remain faithful to the idea of tonality, not to a The Suite symphonique, Op. 29, ‘La nuit et le fou’ in Beirut in July 1980, with the subtitle Le Liban en of Ukraine, the Orchestre Symphonique Français, and traditional tonality, based on the evolutionary idea of a (Night and the Fool) was written in Paris in 1982. Like flammes (Lebanon in Flames), is inspired by a poem by others. progress amid a series of modulations, but rather of a the Image symphonique, Opus 29, was inspired by a El-Khoury, written in the middle of the war, in 1976. Pierre-Petit wrote about the composer: ‘Bechara El- tonality conceived as a point of reference, a fixed pole.