CAL PERFORMANCES PRESENTS

Saturday, January 26, 2013, 8pm Hertz Hall

Eco Ensemble David Milnes, conductor

PROGRAM

Harrison Birtwistle (b. 1934) Secret Theatre (1984)

flute, piccolo Tod Brody percussion Loren Mach Kyle Bruckmann piano Ann Yi Bill Kalinkos 1 Antoine van Dongen , David Granger violin 2 Dan Flanagan Brad Hogarth Ellen Ruth Rose horn Alicia Telford Felix Fan Hall Goff Richard Worn

INTERMISSION

Ivan Fedele (b. 1953) La Chute de la Maison Usher (1995) Music for the film of the same name by Jean Epstein (1928)

soprano Ann Moss harp Naomi Hoffmeyer flute, , piccolo Stacey Pelinka piano Ann Yi oboe Kyle Bruckmann violin 1 Antoine van Dongen clarinet 1 Bill Kalinkos violin 2 Dan Flanagan clarinet 2, Peter Josheff viola Ellen Ruth Rose bassoon David Granger cello Felix Fan horn Alicia Telford double bass Richard Worn percussion Loren Mach

Cal Performances’ 2012–2013 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo.

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Harrison Birtwistle (b. 1934) Manchester College of Music in the early 1950s premiered at the 1968 , it in- tend to unfold, as biographer Michael Hall has Secret Theatre (1984) where he joined with composers Alexander corporates all the music of Tragoedia, setting it pointed out, “in one long continuous move- Goehr and Peter Maxwell Davies to found the in a kaleidoscopic array of more than one hun- ment…structured so as to gradually bring into Shortly before his 75th birthday, composer New Music Manchester Group—a seminal en- dred short numbers (arias, chorales, dances, sce- the foreground something that had originally Harrison Birtwistle (Sir Harrison to his fans, semble for the performance of new music out- nic music, and so forth). been in the background.” In the case of Secret Harry to his friends) explained to his inter- side of London. Only later did Birtwistle’s com- While his later operatic works—Yan Tan Theatre, this general principle holds, but there locutor Andrew Clark of the Financial Times: positional talent gain the upper hand, with the Tethera (1986), (1991), and The Second is also a loosely episodic element of exchange at “Writing music is the only thing I do.... I get ill Refrains and Choruses (1957) for wind quintet. It Mrs Kong (1994)—are more conventionally nar- play, according to which no single melodic ut- if I don’t work. I’ve always felt there was a music is apparently apocryphal that he sold his clari- rative in structure, the episodic and stylized terance or ostinato figure holds sway for very in my head that didn’t exist, and it’s still there. nets immediately after this work was chosen for manner of Punch and Judy laid the ground work long. Occasionally an ostinato pattern will blos- Thank God for that—it seems to be a permanent inclusion at the 1959 Cheltenham Festival, but for what is widely considered Birtwistle’s mas- som into tunefulness; more often a melodic line thing.” As Britain’s preeminent exponent of the by the early 1960s, he was identifying himself terpiece, , commissioned by will disintegrate into a stuttering shadow of its modernist traditions exemplified by the likes primarily as a composer. Even today, however, Covent Garden in 1970 but produced instead former self. In this shifting of roles lies the “se- of Arnold Schoenberg, , Edgard the impact of his years as a clarinetist can be (after a long hiatus) by English National cret” of the score. Varèse, and Olivier Messiaen, Birtwistle can heard in his preference for woodwind and brass in 1986. Together with six interludes of elec- Before he began composing, Birtwistle set reckon his musical gift as both lasting and con- timbres and his predominantly melodic or con- tronic music realized at IRCAM (the Institut down on paper some 66 pages representing his tinually in progress. Summing up his achieve- trapuntal writing; instead of gravitating toward de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/ thoughts about Secret Theatre. Unusually—in ments, biographer Jonathan Cross observes: chords or keyboard figurations, Birtwistle’s Musique in Paris), The Mask of Orpheus is pre- fact, uniquely—excerpts from these “jottings” “Like Stravinsky, like Cézanne, Birtwistle’s art muse typically sings in long-breathed lines. His sented in 126 vignettes, grouped in threes, re- were included in the program notes at the pre- is generally concerned with the universal rather melodies gain some of their expansive quality flecting or refracting the Orpheus myth through miere: “divide the ensemble maybe in perfor- than the particular, with the collective rather from his frequent reliance on a wedge-shaped a triple perspective: Man/Woman (performed mance…important. Maybe the instruments that than the individual, with landscape rather than pattern of intervals (widening symmetrically by a singer), Hero/Heroine (performed by a make up the horizontal element could change portrait. Hence his preoccupation with myth outward from a focal pitch)—though this ba- mime), and Myth itself (performed by a giant during the performance (beware, not too much and ritual, with formal theater and stylized dra- sic shape is often subjected to systematic al- singing puppet). coming and going)…maybe they could stand? ma.... And hence his obsession with simple mu- terations, such that the original contour of the Given Birtwistle’s interest in drama and Perhaps?” The composer mused: “If the instru- sical structures—such as verse-refrain forms— wedge is sometimes inaudible. ritual, it is not surprising that his instrumental ments of the cantus are going to change during and with the very basics of musical language— Although Birtwistle made a relatively clean works, too, partake of the theater—often as- the course of the piece, and there are to be solos pulse, melody, repetition, variation.” break between his performing career and his signing to an instrument or group of players a in the continuum then some sort of instrumen- On the one hand, Birtwistle has produced composing career, his years as a musical dra- particular function in the “narrative” of a piece tal role playing is implied—this is interesting… a corpus of works remarkably unified by a few matist have been thoroughly intertwined with and sometimes choreographing the movement important do not precompose the idea of role trademark preoccupations: layered or stratified the development of his compositional aesthetic. of the performers. In Secret Theatre, the players playing, let any logic in that direction come out textures, an idiosyncratic approach to melodic From 1975 to 1982, he wrote a great deal of inci- form two distinct groups—the “cantus” and the of the composed context—it should make a sort writing often featuring angular melodies, a pref- dental music, serving as music director and then “continuum.” The cantus group stands and sings of hidden drama on an independent level.... Like erence for mechanical or ostinato patterning, associate director of London’s National Theatre, out a lyrical melody, spun like spider’s silk and a secret theater....” and a highly intuitive approach to form. On an appointment that resulted from his already usually in unison or near unison; by contrast the Having already set down these ideas in his the other hand, Birtwistle’s work has evolved established dramatic credentials, including seated continuum is devoted to various inter- notebook, Birtwistle then encountered Robert through what Cross calls “distinct periods participation in the Pierrot Players, which pre- locking repeated patterns or ostinatos. Though Graves’s poem “Secret Theater” with its pregnant concentrating (in very general terms) on vio- miered his Monodrama in 1967. Another of his individual instruments may move from cantus lines about music as a herald of dreams. It was a lent, formalist oppositions in the 1960s, lyrical early successes bears the title Tragoedia (1965) to continuum and back, the primary cantus perfect fit. Indeed, as Hall points out, the “essen- processionals in the 1970s, and an exploration and, in the composer’s words, it concerns itself instruments are the predictably melodic ones: tially rhythmic” nature of the ostinato patterns of the basics of rhythm, melody and gesture in with “the ritual and formal aspects of Greek flute, oboe, clarinet, and two , with horn yields a music that is “dance-like and intensely the 1980s.” In fact all three of these key features tragedy rather than with the content of a specific and trumpet occasionally chiming in. By con- alive”: “Listeners may find it hard to believe that leave their traces on the music we will hear to- play.” This interest in archetypal or folk drama, trast, the continuum group works like an intri- Robert Graves’s injunction to ‘boldly ring down night: Secret Theatre (1984). rather than in the psychological development cately cogged clock, fully worthy of attention in the curtain, then dance out our love’ was not in Birtwistle’s quip that composing was his of a particular dramatic situation, carries over its own right. Birtwistle’s mind from the beginning.” “only” occupation must be taken with a grain into Birtwistle’s stage works, including Punch While Birtwistle’s actual stage works are Secret Theatre was commissioned by the of salt. First, he was a clarinetist, and a fine and Judy. Completed at Princeton University characterized by their atomization into tiny London Sinfonietta for a concert commemo- one at that, earning a scholarship to the Royal with the support of a Harkness Fellowship and scenes, his orchestra and large ensembles works, rating Birtwistle’s 50th birthday, and it is

6 CAL PERFORMANCES CAL PERFORMANCES 7 PROGRAM NOTES PROGRAM NOTES widely regarded as a milestone in his career. made him a favorite composer in his native Italy amplifying and diffusing gestures initiated by widely regarded as one of Europe’s leading new It was featured at the commemorative concert and in France and that are fully on display in the soloist; subsequent concertos have further music groups, have programmed nearly 20 of his that marked his winning of the Siemens Prize his new soundtrack for Jean Epstein’s 1928 film multiplied the possibilities of the genre by add- pieces. Fedele has also received world premieres in 1995, and the following year it inspired the treatment of Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic thriller ing live electronics—for example, L’Orizzonte de from the major orchestras and contemporary mu- title (“Secret Theatres”) of a three-week fes- “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Elettra (“Elektra’s Horizon”) for viola, live elec- sic groups of France and Italy, including Nuove tival in England devoted to the composer. In Born in Lecce in southeastern Italy, tronics, and chamber orchestra (1997). Sincronie, Ensemble Varèse, Contrechamps, addition to being awarded the Siemens Prize, Fedele studied piano at the Giuseppe Verdi Very few of Fedele’s works are literally “stage Gruppo Musica Insieme, Accroche Note, and Birtwistle has received the Grawemeyer Award Conservatory, composition with Franco works,” among them the early Dodici figlie di O Octandre, as well as the major orchestras of in 1968, was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Donatoni at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in (“The Twelve Daughters of O”) with choreogra- France and Italy. His works have been pro- Arts et des Lettres in 1986, gained British Rome, and philosophy at the State University phy by Mietta Corli (1977) and the secular can- grammed by Pierre Boulez, Riccardo Muti, knighthood in 1988, and was named a British in Milan. During the 1990s, Fedele gained rec- tata Oltre Narciso (“Behind Narcissus”) on the Myung-Whun Chung, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Companion of Honour in 2001. He has won ognition in Paris, completing commissions for composer’s own text (1982, for singers, dancers, and Leonard Slatkin, and concerts have been two Gramophone Awards (in 2002 and 2011), some of its most prestigious ensembles: Duo en chorus, and chamber orchestra). Yet so much of dedicated to his music at the Festival Musica in for recordings of Pulse Shadows (on the poetry résonance for the Ensemble Intercontemporain Fedele’s music incorporates elements of theater Strasbourg, Festival de Caen, Venice Biennale, of Paul Celan) and Night’s Black Bird, and his in 1991, a Piano Concerto for Radio France in that it is hard not to consider him an inherently Festival de Barcelona, Festival Milano Musica, piece for alto saxophone and wind ensemble 1993, and Richiamo (“Signal”) (for brass, percus- “dramatic” composer. In an interview for the and Festival of Helsinki. Fedele is a well respect- received a high-profile premiere at the sion, and electronics) for IRCAM in 1993–1994. 2003 Warsaw Autumn Festival, he described his ed teacher, having served at the major conserva- Last Night of the 1995 BBC Proms, where it While one might think that Fedele discov- orchestral work Scena (1997–1998), which was tories in Strasbourg, Rome, and Milan, where reached an estimated worldwide audience of 100 ered his love of instrumental tone colors while in written to be performed at La Scala (Italy’s most he is also Artistic Director of the Orchestra I million. Among those who have commissioned France—a land known for the shimmering tim- famous operatic stage), as an attempt to “realize Pomeriggi Musicali. His opera Antigone (2006) or premiered his music are Pierre Boulez, Oliver bres of Debussy and the latter-day experiments a composition whose individual sections would received the Prix Franco Abbiati in 2007, and La Knussen, Daniel Barenboim, Christoph von in resonance of the “spectral” school—in fact, appear as characters in the so-called theatre of Scala commissioned and premiered his 33 noms Dohnányi, the Deutsche Staatsoper in Berlin, his first major orchestral score Chiari (“Lights”) memory…in a fashion similar to the characters (for two female voices and orchestra) in 2009. the Glyndebourne Festival, Wien Modern, (1981) already exhibits a lush and lovely surface in an opera.” Given his gravitation toward dramatic works Stockholm New Music, and the Salzburg, and specifies the stage placement of particular Many of Fedele’s scores rely on the dramatic that lie pointedly outside the operatic stage, it Holland, and Lucerne festivals. His opera The instruments to focus attention on the drama of delivery of texts, especially those by his coun- is hardly surprising that Fedele has joined received its premiere at the Royal performance and the spatialization of sound. tryman Giuliano Corti (b. 1948), a philosopher ranks of recent composers who have written Opera House, Covent Garden, in 2008, and These two features are even more apparent in and man of letters who has lent his talents to new soundtracks for silent film, in this case, a the following year his musical theater work The works like Richiamo (1994), which arrays its numerous film and industrial design projects. In landmark of the French cinema, Jean Epstein’s Corridor opened the Aldeburgh Festival. Angel- performers symmetrically around the stage and addition to his literary criticism, novels, plays, La Chute de la Maison Usher. With help from Fighter for voices and ensemble was premiered in Duo en résonance (1991), which approximates and screenplays, Corti has provided the inspi- the famous surrealist Luis Buñuel, who parted at the Leipzig BachFest in 2010, and Christian the echoing antiphonal choirs characteristic of ration for Fedele’s Coram (1995–1996) and the somewhat acrimoniously from Epstein during Tetzlaff premiered his Violin Concerto with the Giovanni Gabrieli and other composers of the subsequent Coram Requiem (1996), as well as for work on the film, it builds on Poe’s Gothic ac- Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2011. Venetian Renaissance. the acclaimed septet Animus anima (2000), the count of a hypersensitive man (Roderick) ob- Driving Fedele’s instrumental stagecraft is quasi-dramatic score for soprano and ensemble served by his friend Allan and obsessed by the a theatrical understanding of the interaction Maja (1999), and Fedele’s works for the Italian portrait he is painting of Lady Usher (his sister Ivan Fedele (b. 1953) between performing forces. It is not surprising, Radio: Barbara Mitica (1996, for tape) and in Poe’s story, but his wife in Epstein’s film— La Chute de la Maison Usher (1995) then, that he has shown a special fondness for Orfeo al cinema Orfeo (“Orpheus at the Orfeo most likely to avoid attaching any overtones of the concerto, including his Viola Concerto of Theater”) (1994, for two speaking roles and incest to their peculiarly intense relationship). New soundtrack for Jean Epstein’s film of the same 1990, Violin Concerto (1998–1999), and Arco de MIDI keyboard). Prefiguring Oscar Wilde’sPicture of Dorian name (1928), based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short story Vento (“Arch of Wind”) for clarinet and orches- Fedele’s music has garnered many honors, Grey by decades, Poe’s narrative suggests that as “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839). tra (2002–2004). In addition to the expected including a Gaudeamus Award for his first the painting of Lady Usher becomes ever more emphasis on virtuosity, Fedele’s concerted works String Quartet, First Prize in Parma’s Goffredo lifelike, she herself fades away, despite the be- Enter the mysterious stranger. Ivan Fedele is no have also suggested strikingly new solo–ensem- Petrassi competition for his orchestral score Epos spectacled ministrations of the local doctor, into longer an unfamiliar figure for American audi- ble relationships. In addition to the more recent (“Epic”), the Chévalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des death and a spectral afterlife, ended only by the ences. Indeed, listeners are embracing the music Ruah (2001–2002), Profilo in eco (“Profile in Lettres from the French Ministry of Culture, collapse of the eponymous house through fire, of Ivan Fedele, hearing in it the scintillating in- Echo”) (1994–1995) features the flute and treats and Italy’s “Barocco” and “Diomede” awards. wind, and water. The typically stormy backdrop strumentation and dramatic intensity that have the orchestra as a sort of “resonating chamber,” The Paris-based Ensemble Intercontemporain, of psychological and meteorological agitation

8 CAL PERFORMANCES CAL PERFORMANCES 9 PROGRAM NOTES ABOUT THE ARTISTS mirrors Roderick’s own obsessions and the sto- TheEco Ensemble, under the direction of David National Symphony. Recent engagements have ry’s macabre conclusion. Milnes, is a new group of leading Bay Area mu- included appearances at the MANCA Festival in Except for the trudging footsteps of the fu- sicians dedicated to exploring and sharing the Nice, France, with the Philharmonic Orchestra neral march and the use of the female singer to work of adventurous composers. Its mission is of Nice; in Mexico, at the International Festival give voice to Lady Usher’s shadow-of-her-former- to bring exciting, contemporary music to both “El Callejón del Ruido” with the Guanajauto self resurrection, Fedele’s soundtrack tends to experienced audiences and new listeners. Symphony Orchestra; and in Russia, with the underscore more abstract relationships between Novosibirsk Symphony Orchestra. He has col- sound and story. For example, Roderick’s be- David Milnes laborated in performances with Frederica von loved guitar evokes no literal strumming sounds serves as Music Stade, Dawn Upshaw, Bill T. Jones, Paul Hillier, (though perhaps the prominent role of the harp Director of the James Newton, David Starobin and Chanticleer, in Fedele’s score pays it some oblique homage). Eco Ensemble, and has appeared at the Santa Fe, Tanglewood, Even more than the image track, which returns Berkeley’s profes- Aspen and Monadnock music festivals. fleetingly to particular objects in the fashion of sional new music A dedicated proponent of new music, from symbolist poetry, the soundtrack spirals through ensemble in resi- 2002 to 2009 Mr. Milnes was Music Director of its material, recurring to particular melodies dence, as well as the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and gestures in the manner of Roderick’s multi- Music Director with whom he commissioned and premiered farious obsessions: the booming gong, the sound of the UC Berkeley University Symphony many new works from around the world. He of tolling bells, the plangent melody of the oboe, Orchestra since 1996. In his early years, he stud- has made recordings of music by John Anthony the fluttering breath of the flute. The score is ab- ied piano, organ, clarinet, cello and voice, and Lennon, James Newton, Edmund Campion, sorbingly atmospheric, preferring melodic lines briefly entertained a career as a jazz pianist, ap- Jorge Liderman and Pablo Ortiz. of falling contour (in keeping with the decadent pearing with Chuck Mangione, Gene Krupa, mood of the house itself), sharp punctuations, Billy Taylor and John Pizzarelli. After receiving The UC Berkeley Center for New Music and and occasional passages of anxious activity. At advanced degrees in conducting from SUNY Audio Technologies (CNMAT) houses a dy- the same time, many of Fedele’s musical gestures Stony Brook and the Yale School of Music, and namic group of educational, performance and play on the idea of false synchronicity—stutter- studying with Otto-Werner Müller, Herbert research programs focused on the creative ing figures, displaced echoes, irregular repeti- Blomstedt, Erich Leinsdorf and Leonard interaction between music and technology. tions—in ways that resonate with the more phil- Bernstein, he won the prestigious Exxon CNMAT’s research program is highly inter- osophical overtones Epstein’s film. Contrasting Assistant Conductor position with the San disciplinary, linking all of UC Berkeley’s disci- Roderick’s destructive, supernatural vision with Francisco Symphony, where he also served as plines dedicated to the study or creative use of the bemused and all-too-human impairment of Music Director of the highly acclaimed San sound. CNMAT’s educational program inte- his friend Allan (who moves through the world Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, which he grates a Music and Technology component into with magnifying glass and ear trumpet), one led on its first European tour in 1986. the Department of Music’s graduate program in must wonder: Who has the keener insight, the Mr. Milnes has conducted frequently in music composition and also supports the under- one who sees and replicates the disjointedness Russia and the Baltics, serving as Music Director graduate curriculum in music and technology of the world around him, or the one who ex- of the Riga Independent Opera Company and for music majors and nonmusic majors. Learn erts every effort, however feeble, to shape those as a principal guest conductor of the Latvian more at www.cnmat.berkeley.edu. disjunctures into a coherent narrative? Like the film itself, Fedele’s score is a meditation on the power of perception—and apperception—in both life and art.

Notes by Beth E. Levy; portions of the note on Ivan Fedele are modified from materials written for the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players.

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