World premiere ROBIN DE RAAFF Entangled Tales Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra Residentie Orkest, The Hague Het Gelders Orkest Yannick Nézet-Séguin | Neeme Järvi Antonello Manacorda Marien van Staalen cello 1 ROBIN DE RAAFF Entangled Tales Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra Residentie Orkest, The Hague Het Gelders Orkest Yannick Nézet-Séguin | Neeme Järvi Antonello Manacorda Marien van Staalen Yannick Nézet-Séguin conductor Marien van Staalen cello Neeme Järvi conductor Antonello Manacorda conductor Cello Concerto (2012-2013)* [1] I (Q = 44) 6:53 [2] II (Q = 88) 6:31 [3] III (Q = 44) 8:46 [4] IV (Q = 88 - Q = 132) 2:57 [5] Coda (Q = 44) 4:55 [6] Entangled Tales, for large orchestra (2007) 8:42 Symphony No 3 “Illumination...Eclipse”, for large orchestra (2014-2015) [7] I (Q = 60) 9:13 [8] II (Q = 42) 10:34 [9] III (Q = 80) 5:32 [10] Coda (Q = 42) 4:20 total time 68:28 4 5 Cello Concerto For a cello, Robin’s concerto is innovative and challenging from a technical In the Ardennes, the wooded hills south of Holland, you hear the silence. point of view. The cello plays all conceivable harmonics. The double stops are The wind rustles through the trees, nature breathes. There, in my tiny cottage, extremely difficult, demanding different dynamics on each string. All of this is I practised new sounds: the solo part of Robin’s concerto. Robin emailed me modern, ground-breaking cello technique; in this respect the concerto reminds his beautiful manuscript page by page, and I sought a solution to each me of Dallapiccola’s work for solo cello. technical challenge. The premiere with Yannick and the orchestra was like a celebration – you can I demonstrated the possibilities of my instrument for Robin in 2012. hear it. I wrote the bowing directions for my colleagues so that we would not And I learned my lesson: his concerto is a state-of-the-art work for cello lose time on it during rehearsals. The orchestra members were extremely and orchestra, for which I had to delve all the way to the bottom of my well prepared: the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra is very much involved bag of tricks. in contemporary music. Yannick’s sympathetic understanding and dedication were absolutely superb. This cello concerto is a miracle, both for the listener and for the soloist. The listener is swept along through unexplored terrain. The beginning, Robin puts special material at the beginning and the end. The concerto opens the cello is accompanied by percussion alone: completely new. The finale, with a forte pizzicato chord, played like a falling arpeggio: B flat - D - A flat - C. a cantilena in the very highest register: heart-rendingly beautiful. But the In the final measures, this arpeggio is repeated softly, twice: first falling, then soloist, too, must step into a new arena. The cellist has to find the deepest rising. An austere opening leads to a mild conclusion – very telling about expression while playing the notes; routine is of no help here. Robin’s musical personality. The instrumentation stands out – even for a master like Robin. Buzzing, New work only reveals its secrets after a lot of listening, so it is great that this shimmering sounds: the orchestral accompaniment to the opening movement. recording is released. The audience can become familiar with the worth, the In the central part, its arched form creates waves of chords, falling like so many merit of this concerto, and new performances will continue to reveal deeper wreaths. And then an airy duet arises between a piccolo and solo cello. layers. I am grateful that I could witness the inception of Robin de Raaff’s Cello Concerto. Marien van Staalen 6 7 Entangled Tales In the summer of 2007, Robin de Raaff wrote Entangled Tales for the Boston Entangled Tales is something like a mosaic. Viewed in detail, it seems to be a Symphony Orchestra, which performed its premiere on 6 August of that year mass of tiny pebbles. But if you listen to the work as a whole, then you hear in the Koussevitsky Music Shed, under the baton of Ludovic Morlot. It was that all those pebbles are intertwined – entangled – and together they yield part of an event titled A Season of Dutch Arts in the Berkshires, in which Dutch a marvellous musical tale. art in all its manifestations was performed for an entire season. The event included a number of concerts in the Tanglewood Music Center, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s famous music academy, with which De Raaff has been Symphony No. 3 affiliated since 2000. After that, the work played a long and winding role in the composer’s oeuvre. In 2011, together with Untangled Tales, composed in that “Illumination…Eclipse” year, it became Tanglewood Tales. Three years later, De Raaff added the Coda to it and shaped it all into his Symphony No. 1, also called Tanglewood Tales. For the occasion of its 125th anniversary, the Arnhem Philharmonic Orchestra asked Robin de Raaff to write a special composition. The result is a symphony Entangled Tales is built up of several layers. It is a continual variation of small of three movements based on the concepts of light and dark, referred to as elements: rhythms, brief melodies, and ever-changing sounds in the rich illumination and eclipse. These words do not point to a state of being, but palette of a large symphony orchestra. He does not hesitate to use an opulent to motion. It is not just about states – light and dark – but also about motion: instrumentation in impressionist and expressionist spheres. These details are illumination and eclipse. combined in more complex structures, where they become almost supermotifs, often conceived on the basis of particular groups of instruments. The top layer De Raaff begins his Symphony No. 3 out of nowhere. Starting from a mind is the continual movement of the music, from exuberant, restless tutti sounds to swept clean, a mental tabula rasa, one single piccolo frees itself from the gently transparent chamber music passages, a constant ebb and flow. We are silence. It is an initial element from which the music gradually develops. That struck by the implosion of energy in the second movement, later to become the single piccolo depicts the light – illumination – airy, coming from afar, but basis for Untangled Tales. unmistakably present. Then, with a second piccolo, the composer adds a musical prism, or rather, a prism chord. More instruments follow; the course 8 9 changes from a single tone to a complex body of tones, from melody to But Robin de Raaff’s Symphony No. 3 does not simply play with the concepts harmony. Little by little, the tessitura moves downward, so that more and more of illumination and eclipse; it also contains a warning. Because classical lower instruments can join in. Ultimately, the sound has rippled out to the music is bearing the brunt of a society where it is in danger of being reduced deepest depths of the orchestra. This is where it achieves the first true eclipse. to a cultural footnote. We must do our utmost to ensure that this symphony does not become merely a tiny bright spot in a disappearing heritage of The second movement follows the first without any pause. It consists of classical music. mirrored duets, two instruments forming the most important musical element. And here too, the sound moves towards the lowest instruments to reach new Kees Wisse depths. Out of the depths a solo violin emerges. It is the central point in the Translations: Carol Stennes/Muse Translations symphony, where there is only one instrumental sound. It is a moment, a mental turning point, a mirroring point. The third movement processes and transforms the material from the previous movements into an almost raw finale in which illumination and eclipse demand our attention with equal fierceness. Who will win? It seems to be Illumination, now appearing in the coda as the airy piccolos from the primal beginning. But in fact they bear within them the eclipse, now they sound one octave lower and go down even further, to the very lowest piccolo notes. The definitive and final ending is for the entire orchestra, leading to a final, softly unravelling sound, like a sigh, over a broad tonal spectrum. It is an anticlimax, but at the same time the deepest possible ultimate climax. 10 11 Robin de Raaff (Breda, 1968) discovered his own diverse musical world The Aspen Music Festival, Cabrillo Festival (Santa Cruz), The Banff Center, through playing classical piano as well as bass guitar from a very early age. Lincoln Center (New York). After being introduced to the legend and legacy of Jaco Pastorius, De Raaff’s musical world expanded explosively as an instrumentalist. Parallel with this After a creative period of nearly 10 years, De Raaff finished his first opera early development, De Raaff also created his own music and lyrics for his Band RAAFF in 2004, which was commissioned by the Dutch National Opera in a where instrumental sections grew in significance, ultimately into completely co-production with the Holland Festival. The birth of this opera started with scored instrumental works. These instrumental compositions led him to enrol as De Raaff’s success at a master class for young composers with Pierre Boulez a student of composition. organised by DNO in 1995. De Raaff is of the generation of Dutch composers emerging in the nineties. His second opera, also commissioned by DNO and in both cases the He first studied composition with Geert van Keulen at the Amsterdam libretto was written by Janine Brogt, resulted in Waiting for Miss Monroe Conservatory and later with Theo Loevendie, graduating cum laude in 1997.