New Juilliard Ensemble Photo by Claudio Papapietro
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New Juilliard Ensemble Photo by Claudio Papapietro Support Scholarships The Juilliard Scholarship Fund provides vital support to any student with need and helps make a Juilliard education possible for many deserving young actors, dancers, and musicians. With 90 percent of our students eligible for financial assistance, every scholarship gift represents important progress toward Juilliard’s goal of securing the resources required to meet the needs of our dedicated artists. Gifts in any amount are gratefully welcomed! Visit juilliard.edu/support or call Tori Brand at (212) 799-5000, ext. 692, to learn more. The Juilliard School presents New Juilliard Ensemble Joel Sachs, Founding Director and Conductor Lila Duffy, Soprano Michael Braugher, Rapper Tuesday, October 1, 2019, 7:30pm Peter Jay Sharp Theater SHULAMIT RAN Fault Line (2005-6) (Israel/U.S., b. 1949) Lila Duffy, Soprano MAGNUS LINDBERG Souvenir (2010) (Finland, b. 1958) I. II. III. Intermission ALEXANDER GOEHR … between the lines (2013) (Germany/U.K., b. 1932) Western hemisphere premiere BALÁZS HORVÁTH die ReAlisierung einer komPosition (Hungary, b. 1976) (2013, new version 2018) World premiere of new version Michael Braugher, Rapper Performance time: approximately 1 hour and 25 minutes, including an intermission This performance is supported in part by the Muriel Gluck Production Fund. Please make certain that all electronic devices are turned off during the performance. The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not permitted in this auditorium. 1 Notes on the Program by Joel Sachs Fault Line SHULAMIT RAN Shulamit Ran began setting Hebrew poetry to music at age 7. Only two Shulamit Ran years later she was studying composition and piano with some of Israel’s most noted musicians, and she soon heard her works performed by Born: professional musicians and orchestras. With scholarships from the Mannes Tel Aviv, Israel, College of Music and the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, Ran studied in 1949 in New York with Norman Dello Joio and in Chicago with Ralph Shapey. In 1973 she joined the faculty of University of Chicago, where she became the Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professor in the department of music as well as artistic director of Contempo, the university’s contemporary chamber players. She considers her teacher, later colleague, and friend Ralph Shapey an important mentor. Ran has been awarded five honorary doctorates, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received major composers’ honors, including the Pulitzer Prize. Her music has been played by major orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, and American Composers Orchestra, with conductors Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Zubin Mehta, Yehudi Menuhin, Gustavo Dudamel, and others. She was composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Lyric Opera of Chicago and a resident at the American Academy in Rome. Her music, much of which has been recorded, is published by Theodore Presser Company and the Israeli Music Institute. Ran, now the Andrew MacLeish Distinguished Service Professor Emerita at the University of Chicago, is composing Anne Frank, a full-scale opera with a libretto by Charles Kondek, to premiere in November 2020. Fault Line, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony’s Music Now program, was begun in May 2005 and completed early the following year. The composer writes: The title Fault Line is a metaphor for the volatility of human existence. Underneath even the most seemingly orderly of lives, fault lines lie, at times totally invisible on the surface, yet capable of erupting with the power to shutter and change all. Fault Line may be heard as a journey of a life, with all of its exuberance, energy, despair, triumphs and losses, wonder, brashness, and the grace of great tenderness. In three interlocking sections, the work opens resonantly and deliberately, with the distance bounded by the adjacent notes F and G gradually expanding into larger cycles of growing activity. This first large section of the work is bright and rich in sound, highlighting various ensemble combinations as they move in and out of fuller textures. It is the much sparser, more lyrical and transparent middle portion of the work, replete with solo lines, that transforms Fault Line’s course, with 2 darker undercurrents assuming a progressively more prominent role. The third and last large section begins with strident brass and timpani chords, gradually building into the work’s most intense stretch, with tutti and solo lines merging together. Fault Line’s opening line briefly comes back much transformed, in no way a recapitulation but rather alluding to the continuous thread of this journey, leading to the final climax which soon disintegrates into hushed silence. Much of the optional vocal part, appearing late and only fleetingly, is sung in vocalise style (wordless singing). Not wishing to entirely forgo the voice’s capacity to emit the more varied sound of sung speech led me to integrate a text line from Shakespeare’s Othello (final act) that seemed especially appropriate: “Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate …” Souvenir MAGNUS LINDBERG Originally a pianist, Magnus Lindberg studied composition at the Sibelius Academy, where his teachers included Einojuhani Rautavaara (‘56, Magnus Lindberg composition) and Paavo Heininen. A leading Finnish modernist in a musically conservative country, Heininen encouraged the study of the European Born: avant-garde, which led to the founding of the Ears Open Society, an Helsinki, Finland, informal group—including Lindberg, Eero Hämeeniemi, Jouni Kaipainen, in 1958 Kaija Saariaho, and Esa-Pekka Salonen—that aimed for greater awareness of contemporary modernism. In 1981 Lindberg moved to Paris for studies with Vinko Globokar and Gérard Grisey, also attending Franco Donatoni’s summer classes in Siena. Other associates from those days included Brian Ferneyhough, Helmut Lachenmann, and York Höller, all leaders of that generation. Over the next few decades, Lindberg explored many of the important trends, becoming one of today’s most prominent orchestral composers, commissioned by many of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors. From 2009 to 2012, he was composer-in-residence of the New York Philharmonic, writing pieces including EXPO, the premiere of which celebrated the opening of the tenure of Alan Gilbert (Pre-College ’85; MM ’94, orchestral conducting) as the orchestra’s music director. Lindberg was appointed composer in residence with the London Philharmonic Orchestra for the 2014-15 through 2016-17 seasons, again writing a host of new compositions. Lindberg’s music, published by Boosey and Hawkes, has been recorded on the Deutsche Grammophon, Sony, Ondine, Da Capo, and Finlandia labels. In 2003, Lindberg was awarded the prestigious Wihuri Sibelius Prize. Adapted from a biography provided by Boosey & Hawkes 3 Notes on the Program by Joel Sachs (continued) Souvenir was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and Gilbert and premiered at Symphony Space in Manhattan by members of the orchestra. It commemorates the French composer Gérard Grisey (1946-98). The piece is unusual for Lindberg in that it is divided into separate movements; he normally writes large pieces in inseparable sections. He says: I didn’t start out planning this work to reflect my thoughts about Gérard Grisey, yet it ended up having that connection. It’s also connected to the fact that another important feature of my life was the summer I spent with Franco Donatoni in Italy, and my appreciation for his chamber symphony, titled Souvenir, from 1967. The connection of two of my teachers within this project made sense; it became a kind of “souvenir” world that led me back to the concept of the sinfonietta, the works for small orchestra. When you think about the sinfonietta, Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphonies stand as a reference point, but I would also say that sinfoniettas became a big thing in the 1960s and ‘70s, when groups like the London Sinfonietta and [Boulez’s] Domaines Musicales provided small-scale symphonic opportunities for composers who didn’t have the opportunity to work with full orchestras. I felt nostalgic to get back to this world of the sinfonietta, and so I have scored this work for just one instrument per part—strings and winds (with two horns, because I think of the horns as a pair)—and two percussionists. Having spent many years working with big orchestral textures, I was suddenly faced with the challenge of writing for what, in comparison, seems like an almost ‘naked’ ensemble. Adapted from a program note © Magnus Lindberg and James M. Keller, program annotator of the New York Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony; reproduced by permission of Mr. Keller … between the lines ALEXANDER GOEHR Alexander Goehr is the son of the distinguished conductor and Schoenberg Alexander Goehr student Walter Goehr, who shortly emigrated to the U.K. Well known by age 20, the younger Goehr became a leader of the 1960s Manchester Born: avant-garde, which included his friends Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Berlin, Germany, Maxwell Davies. In 1955-56, having attended Messiaen’s Paris master in 1932 class, he became a BBC producer and broadcaster and the director of the Music Theatre Ensemble. In 1971 he was appointed professor of music at Leeds University; five years later, he became chair of