Jeffrey Milarsky, Conductor Nadia Sirota, Viola Matthew Pearce, Tenor
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Friday Evening, October 26, 2018, at 7:30 The Juilliard School presents AXIOM Jeffrey Milarsky , Conductor Nadia Sirota , Viola Matthew Pearce , Tenor NICO MUHLY (b. 1981) No Uncertain Terms (2017) JOHN CORIGLIANO (b. 1938) Chiaroscuro (1997) Light Shadows Strobe YIJIA WANG, Piano SALOME JORDANIA, Piano (Tuned a Quarter-Tone Lower) Intermission MUHLY Keep in Touch (2005); arranged by Chris Thompson NADIA SIROTA , Viola CORIGLIANO Poem in October (1970) MATTHEW PEARCE , Tenor Performance time: approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes, including one intermission The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not permitted in this auditorium. Information regarding gifts to the school may be obtained from the Juilliard School Development Office, 60 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023-6588; (212) 799-5000, ext. 278 (juilliard.edu/giving). Alice Tully Hall Please make certain that all electronic devices are turned off during the performance. Notes on the Program essential role played by the latter’s music in Muhly’s creative and personal lives. by Matthew Mendez Opening with a near-literal quotation of the first measures of Reich’s 1976 magnum No Uncertain Terms opus Music for 18 Musicians —a kind of NICO MUHLY objet trouvé that sets the rest of No Born August 26, 1981, in Randolph, Vermont Uncertain Terms in relief, functioning to make its sonic cross-references intelligi - Equal parts generous collaborator and ble—Muhly’s homage is built around a tireless operator, Nico Muhly (M.M. ’04, sequence of 14 chords that recur repeat - composition ) is probably the most visible edly, in a manner reminiscent of a Baroque repre sentative of a generation of younger chaconne. As has often been the case with American composers whose members chaconnes, Muhly’s harmonic cycle remain s first came into public view during the more or less fixed, even as it remains sub - 2000s, united in the conviction that rigid ject to a process of constant reinflection, old dichotomies like “popular”/“classical” functioning like a fixed prism through which and “accessible”/“serious” had become many luminous variants are diffracted. not so much blurry or even arbitrary as— finally—meaningless. Informally mentored This dynamic is tied to Muhly’s description by Philip Glass (Diploma ’60, M.S. 62, com - of No Uncertain Terms as “a sort of archive” position ), from whom he learned the documenting some of the ways Reich’s virtues of fostering one’s own musical output has influenced his own: the “per - micro-community, Muhly began putting sonal archive” is one of Muhly’s favorite this “post-genre” ethos (as some have metaphors, which refers to “all the things, referred to it) into practice early and often, physical and otherwise, that define us.” starting with his time at Juilliard, from That is to say that in depicting various facets which he graduated with a master’s of his musical relationship with Reich, Muhly degree in 2004. Indeed, the intervening also depicts himself (and in this respect, it decade and a half have seen him engaged is no coincidence that a recording of Music in an almost impossibly multifarious array for 18 Musicians was the first album Muhly of musical activity, with few, if any, medi - ever purchased). As such, char acteristic ums, forms, or scenes off limits: on any Muhly preoccupations—allusions to t he late given day, Muhly is just as likely to be Renaissance Anglican choral music he found lending his talents to projects spear - grew up singing in Rhode Island; earnest headed by the likes of Björk, Usher, and outbursts of “romantic over-expression” for Sufjan Stevens as he is to be focusing his the strings; nods to the mystical practice of energies on a stage work for the Metropolitan glossolalia (speaking in tongues)—become Opera. ( Marnie , his second Met commis - charged with all manner of unexpected, sion, is currently receiving its premiere run unheard-of resonances once placed in No at the house.) Uncertain Terms ’ Reichian frame. Written under the auspices of Carnegie Chiaroscuro Hall, for a concert series curated by Steve JOHN CORIGLIANO Reich (’61, composition ) on the occasion of Born February 16, 1938, in New York, his 80th birthday year, No Uncertain Terms New York pays direct tribute to the elder composer— an affirmation, offered with all of the Among that rare breed of artists who will rhetorical force indicated in the title, of the try anything at least once, John Corigliano, who marked his 80th birthday earlier this unusual or unfamiliar technical and expres - year, is one of the nation’s most decorated sive challenges. Written for two pianos, living composers, being the unprecedented one tuned a quarter-tone lower than is cus - winner of a Pulitzer Prize, Grawemeyer tomary, Chiaroscuro is among the fruits of Award, Academy Award, and multiple this line of thinking. (The quarter- tone is Grammys. Indeed, the sheer extent of half the size of the usual semitone, the these accolades is direct testament to the smallest division of the octave traditionally wide-ranging trajectory of Corigliano’s employed in Western music.) Corigliano career: over the course of its six decades, has related his initial, leery reaction to the he has consistently made a positive virtue proposed commission: “Why should I out of his adaptability, whether it was his write a two-piano piece when I could write intensive involvement with incidental a one-piano piece that sounds like two music during his 20s, his mid-career work pianos? What’s the point? Why do I need scoring films (notably, he wrote the sound - the second piano?” He hit upon an answer tracks to Altered States and The Red Violin ), to these questions once he realized the or his strongly held belief in the need for pianos could be employed in such a way new concertos for instruments lacking an that quarter-tones would be generated as a extensive repertoire (his catalog features result of the tuning discrepancy between solo vehicles for oboe, clarinet, and flute). them (Corigliano: “Each piano would sound That belief stems, in turn, from Corigliano’s perfectly tuned by itself but, for example, acute sense of the composer’s position in the note G on one piano would sound at a society: as long ago as 1982, he firmly pitch between G and F sharp on the other avowed that the composer’s “responsibil - piano”). Yet although the use of two key - ity does not end with the final double bar.” boards tuned in this manner does have a By this he was referring literally to all the precedent in works by Charles Ives and things composers have recently been the unheralded Russian émigré Ivan obliged to do past the sheer act of writing Wyschnegradsky, Corigliano’s decision of music, like self-financing recordings, was not rooted in a desire to employ working to ensure premieres also receive micro-intervals to construct alternate tun - second and third performances, and teach - ing systems or scales per se, but instead ing. He has made a particular specialty of to exploit the untapped “lyrical possibilities the last of these: a longtime faculty mem - of the quarter tone.” He was “looking for ber at both Juilliard and Lehman College the expressive power between two notes,” (Muhly was among his Juilliard pupils), as he later put it—much “like a blues Corigliano is widely admired as an inspiring, singer does.” dedicated pedagogue, and in recognition of his reputation as an upstanding artistic citi - As befits its title, Chiaroscuro is concerned zen, some 15 years ago a scholarship was with exploring the light and shade inherent established in his name at the latter institu - in those “in-between” intervals, and does tion, the aim of which is to provide finan - so differently in each of its three move - cial aid to students who might otherwise ments. The curtain-raising Light contrasts not have the opportunity to study music. theatrical broken chords in one piano with quiet, furtive textures in the other, before Ever since the 1970s Corigliano has taken leading directly into the slow Shadows . a kind of problem-solving approach to new Here low, somber chords and tentative projects, which has meant that in practice, melodic strands are overlaid with feather- he has often gravitated toward commis - light interplay between the two keyboards’ sions that would oblige him to tackle highest registers, after which comes a central passage in which Corigliano retro - possibilities afforded by a non-“classical” fits “the sighing semitones that classical approach to the recording studio—one music has always used to express mourn - where the end result would not be an ing” out of quarter-tones, for an effect he “objective,” documentary rendering of a considered “both subtler and more intense.” score as heard in performance, but Last comes Strobe , a disturbingly whirligig instead, one in which various recording perpetuum mobile , in which the conflicting techniques, in and of themselves, became tunings produce a sonic analog to the integral to the effect of the composition on flashing and streaking of the titular light its album format. source. The disorientation is only com - pounded with the entry and subsequent This thinking proved paramount for Keep elaboration of what Corigliano indicates is in Touch , and as Sirota recalls, the way a quotation from a Bach chorale—a harmo - she was mic’d for the recording even nization of the “Old 100th” hymn tune. Here had a lasting impact on her playing style, the second pianist temporarily joins the which became more direct and vulnerable other player at the normal keyboard, initiat - as a result: ing an uneasy, tentative peace. Nevertheless, the accord is fated not to last: before long, It was so close you could hear every sin - the turbulent toccata makes its return, ini - gle scrape of the string and all of these tiating an escalation of hostilities with the little sounds that I always heard were chorale tune, before exhausting itself in a “bad sounds” that people didn’t want to spasm of utter brute force.