A Flowering Tree Blooms in Vienna
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Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Limited February 2007 2007/1 Adams Dean violin letters Included in this issue: Brett Dean’s new violin Brahms and Clara Chin concerto for Frank-Peter Schumann, while the Interview about Alice in Zimmermann, titled The second is a prayer-like Wonderland opera for A Flowering Tree Lost Art of Letter Writing, slow movement drawing Munich receives seven upon van Gogh’s reliance performances over the on nature as a point of coming months. Co- stability. An intermezzo is blooms in Vienna commissioned by the prefaced by a Hugo Wolf The latest operatic collaboration between John Adams Cologne Philharmonie letter detailing his mental and the Royal Stockholm affliction, while the final and Peter Sellars received a high profile premiere at Philharmonic, the concerto movement is a headlong Vienna’s New Crowned Hope festival in November. receives its premiere by the moto perpetuo rush Royal Concertgebouw towards catastrophe, Orchestra conducted by inspired by the Jerilderie Martyn Brabbins, first as Letter of Australian guests in Cologne Photo: © Noosa Weekender bushranger Ned Kelly. (8 March) and then in The third movement relates to one of Dean’s Amsterdam (9 March). Two German new Wolf-Lieder for soprano and ensemble, orchestras immediately feature the concerto descibed by The Guardian as “a vivid in Munich and Berlin: the Munich portrait of crumbling sanity”. Premiered last Bernstein Philharmonic conducted by Jonathan Nott month by Valdine Anderson and the New Candide to travel from (14-17 March) and the Deutsches Birmingham Contemporary Music Group Paris to Milan and London Symphonie-Orchester under Manfred Honeck conducted by Sakari Oramo, the song-cycle (13/14 April). The Swedish and US premieres reflects on Wolf’s skills as a Lieder are planned for the 2007/08 season. composer, as heard in the Spanish The impetus for the new concerto came Songbook, and sets texts describing his from Dean’s observation “that we are increasing madness, estrangement from genuinely losing touch with the tactile society and final, tragic incarceration. element of written communication” 2006 was Dean’s most active concert year particularly with our “heavy reliance on to date. Highlights included the German, electronic stimuli… Sure, we stay in touch Australian and US premieres of his Viola arguably more than ever, via telephone, Concerto with the composer as soloist, the email and messaging, but that too has premiere and EMI recording of Komorov’s undoubtedly changed the nature of Fall within Simon Rattle’s asteroid series communicating”. expanding Holst’s Planets suite, and Photo: © Ruth Walz The concerto examines The Lost Art of performances of Pastoral Symphony in Premiere production of A Flowering Tree in Vienna Letter Writing through four 19th century Melbourne, Perth, Seoul, Los Angeles and Glanert The New Crowned Hope series, planned by influences in his score, between gospel tone and examples, “ranging from private love-letter to Miami. Markus Stenz conducts the Caligula opera acclaimed in Peter Sellars, celebrated the creativity of salsa rhythm, between ecstatically shimmering public manifesto” with the violin playing “the European premiere of Moments of Bliss, the Frankfurt and Cologne Mozart with – perhaps refreshingly in the sound tableaux and cool minimalist twitches, alternate roles of both author and a recipient orchestral suite drawn from Dean’s 250th anniversary year – scarcely a note of between cantilenas and aggressive repetitive of letters”. The opening movement explores forthcoming opera, at the Cologne Triennale patterns.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that composer’s music. Its pan-cultural the impassioned secret romance between on 20 May. focus found full expression in Adams’s “The score is opulent, dreamlike, fiercely lyrical, at modern retelling of an Indian folktale, times shadowy and strange – unlike anything that combining narrative and poetry in English the fifty-nine-year-old composer has written… translation with choruses in Spanish written Despite the happy ending, this little tale is actually for the voices of the Schola Cantorum of quite dark: Kumudha’s failed transformation evokes all the wrecked natural beauty that the Jazz sampler Caracas. march of human progress has left in its wake. The Following the launch of a new jazz initiative at Along with the New Crowned Hope festival, point is driven home in the opera’s last minutes, Boosey & Hawkes last summer, a CD A Flowering Tree was co-commissioned by when Kumudha’s final transformation occurs… sampler has been released, drawing on the San Francisco Symphony, Barbican Centre This is a hard-won triumph, from which not all Second Floor Music catalogue and tracks by shadows have been banished.” The New Yorker (London), Lincoln Center for the Performing B&H’s first new signings, Chick Corea and Arts (New York), and the Berliner “…some of the most ravishingly beautiful David Benoit. Jazz genres on the disc Philharmoniker who gave semi-staged passages of music that Adams has yet include Early Blues and Big Band Swing, composed… [He] continues to develop and Reich performances in December under the baton Latin & World, Spirited Vocals and Lush of Simon Rattle. The new work travels surprise — something of a late-flowering tree Ballads, Classic Bebop & Straight Ahead, Reviews of Daniel Variations himself.” Daily Telegraph in London and New York onwards with semi-staged performances in and Contemporary/Modern Groove. San Francisco (1-3 March) and at the Doctor Atomic receives its European The CD is available to promoters, broadcasters Barbican Centre (10-12 August), and a full- premiere in Peter Sellars’ production at the and choreographers on request from staging at Lincoln Center (2009) – all Holland Festival on 10 June. [email protected]. conducted by John Adams. Further performances are planned in Amsterdam and Chicago. Helen Wallace’s new book commercial reality to tells the inside story of create one of the world’s Anniversaries “An expertly crafted mirage Boosey & Hawkes over 75 great music publishers. years since the 1930 of sound, pulsating with Helen Wallace, who has merger of two rival music rhythmic and harmonic worked as a music critic companies. Rather than 11 December 2008 on The Times and as vitality.” Financial Times waging a price war, Leslie Elliott editor of BBC Music Boosey and Ralph Hawkes Magazine, has researched Carter “An impoverished Indian girl transforms herself joined forces and Centenary of birth the history of Boosey & into a tree so that she can sell her blossoms at expanded their business Photo: Meredith Heuer Hawkes, drawing upon the prince’s palace. The prince falls in love with from its London base to archival correspondence her and they marry, but a jealous sister strips the build a worldwide tree of its branches, consigning the girl to the with composers – much 28 August 2009 operation. netherworld. The prince tries to find his beloved available for the first time – Bohuslav by becoming a beggar. Eventually he recognises Signing Bartók and and oral history interviews her voice, she returns to human form and they are Martinu˚ Strauss and investing in with employees, past and 50th Anniversary of death united. talented young composers present. The book is Photo: B&H “Fanciful? Naive? No more so than The Magic like Britten and Copland, aimed at the general Flute, another love story about transformation, trial the company fully came of reader with an interest in by fire and the redemptive power of music. Those 22 November 2013 age with the acquisition of Serge music or cultural history, and its lively tone, Benjamin themes resound through A Flowering Tree… This is Adams at his most shimmering and seductive, Koussevitzky’s Russian catalogue with its accompanied by over 150 illustrations, Britten above all in the syncopated choruses and masterpieces by Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff brings this behind-the-scenes story of a Centenary of birth ‘magical’ instrumental effects…” and Prokofieff. Close friendships developed, music publisher to vivid life. Photo: Angus McBean Financial Times such as Ernst Roth’s with Strauss and The new volume, due for publication in April, “Who could be more suitable than John Adams Stravinsky in their final decades, while the relationship with Britten was rent asunder by will be available from bookshops or at For a full list of forthcoming anniversaries for a Sellars art project that can, in one breath, www.boosey.com/shop reconcile humanity as well as political, cultural and rival factions. Through boom years and please visit aesthetic opposites? … Adams knows how to unexpected financial threats, artistic Paperback, 256 pages, £12.99 www.boosey.com/anniversaries mediate between the most heterogeneous foresight has been balanced with ISBN 978-0-85162-514-0 Ter Schiphorst destroy anew Chin Iris ter Schiphorst, who signed a publishing contract with Boosey & Hawkes last year, is continuing her series of works exploring themes of Alice in Wonderland psychological disturbance. Her Zerstören [Destroy] for Unsuk Chin discusses her first ensemble was premiered at the opera, opening at the Munich Witten Days for New Chamber Opera Festival on 30 June. Photo: Susanne Müller Music by the Asko Ensemble under Hans Leenders, followed by a performance in Amsterdam. Ter Schiphorst explains the impetus of the work as a need to understand our How did you discover Lewis Carroll’s Alice books? “psychosomatic reaction to the current affairs I discovered Carroll’s books in South Korea, as an situation