Sebastian Currier Clockwork: Music for Violin and Piano
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Sebastian Currier Clockwork: Music for Violin and Piano www.albanyrecords.com TROY1351 albany records u.s. 915 broadway, albany, ny 12207 tel: 518.436.8814 fax: 518.436.0643 Clockwork | Entanglement | Aftersong albany records u.k. box 137, kendal, cumbria la8 0xd tel: 01539 824008 © 2012 albany records made in the usa violin ddd Yehonatan Berick, waRning: cOpyrighT subsisTs in all Recordings issued undeR This label. Laura Melton, piano The Composer The Music Heralded as “music with a distinctive voice” by the New York Times and Clockwork as “lyrical, colorful, firmly rooted in tradition, but absolutely new” by the Clockwork was written in 1989 for violinist Lewis Kaplan. The title could be applied to almost any composition, Washington Post, Sebastian Currier’s music has been performed at major for the music is composed of an intricate superimposition of elements — rhythmic movement of part against venues worldwide by acclaimed artists and orchestras. part, changes in harmony, phrase structure, subsection, sections, and so forth. If this piece may lay special claim With works spanning both chamber and orchestral genres, Currier’s to the title, it is because of a tendency towards regular, unchanging meters, occasional evocations of mechanical works have been performed by ensembles including the Cassatt, Ying, and movements suggestive of the gears of a clock, and careful attention to the timing between the semi-discreet Kronos string quartets, the New World Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, sections that make up the work as a whole. The piece is in four parts, the first of which (Lifeless) recurs through- and New York Philharmonic. His “rapturously beautiful” (New York Times) out the piece, engulfing the other three parts (Turbulent, Searching, Restless). All sections are played attacca. violin concerto, Time Machines, commissioned by Anne-Sophie Mutter, was premiered by the New York Philharmonic in June 2011, and a recording of the performance was released Entanglement by Deutsche Grammophon. His Microsymph, referred to by the composer as a large-scale symphony that At the heart of Entanglement is an irreconcilable conflict. Imagine that two composers by some bizarre fluke has been squeezed into only ten minutes, was commissioned by the American Composer Orchestra and had in their mind’s eye, in some abstract form, the identical sonata. The composers are like night and day; the premiered at Carnegie Hall. It has also been performed by such orchestras as the San Francisco Symphony, one rational and with a sense of humor (but also at times naive and rigid), the other disillusioned and cynical the Gewandhaus Orchestra, Eos Orchestra, and the National Symphony Orchestra, and has been recorded by (but at times insightful and penetrating). They both start with the same conception, but when they proceed the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra with Hugh Wolff, conductor. to turn the abstract into the concrete, their outlook and temperament come into play and the resulting two He has also written works that involve electronic media and video. Nightmaze, a multimedia piece based sonatas, though fashioned out of the same idea, turn out to be dramatically different. on a text of Thomas Bolt in which the protagonist dreams he is rushing along a dark, enormous highway, In Entanglement, these two polarized versions of the same sonata are intertwined like two threads of where strange road signs loom up only to disappear into the night, has been performed by Network for opposite colors, which have been twisted together. The seven movements are the results of the intermingling New Music and the Mosaic Ensemble. The Philadelphia Inquirer said “every turn is breathtaking” of the two parallel sonatas as follows: and the New York Times, “Currier’s rich and imaginative music sets the right tone, with its fractured and dissonant baroque-like gestures leading off like highway exits into the void and hinting at distant reservoirs Sonata I: Sonata II: of emotion and yearning.” I 1. Allegro con brio Currier has received many prestigious awards including the Grawemeyer Award, Berlin Prize, Rome Prize, 2. Erratic I a Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an Academy Award 3. Withdrawn II from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has held residencies at the MacDowell and Yaddo II 4. Adagio con espressione colonies. He received a DMA from the Juilliard School and from 1999-2007 he taught at Columbia University. III 5. Tempo di Menuetto 6. Mocking III IV 7. Vehement/Tema con Variazioni IV The first two movements are almost bar for bar recastings of one another. In the third and fourth movements, The Performers the relationship is less literal. The third movement is a condensation of the fourth movement and serves as an eerie foreshadowing of the Adagio. The sixth movement almost seems to ridicule the brief and humorously In high demand internationally since becoming a prizewinner at the 1993 naive minuet that precedes it. In the seventh movement, the finales of the two parallel sonatas are superim- Naumburg Violin Competition, violinist Yehonatan Berick enjoys a busy con- posed upon one another, bringing the feeling of entanglement to a frenzy. cert schedule as soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and pedagogue, It is my hope that neither of the two sonatas should seem to carry greater weight or be more or less throughout North America, Europe and Israel. Berick has performed, among convincing than the other and that although they should fiercely oppose one another, they should also others, with the Quebec, Winnipeg, Windsor, Ann Arbor, Grand Junction, complement one another and produce in their totality a sense of equilibrium and wholeness. Jerusalem and Haifa Symphonies, the Israeli, Cincinnati, Montreal and Manitoba Chamber Orchestras, Thirteen Strings and Ensemble Appassionata. Aftersong He has collaborated with many world renowned artists, including pianists Aftersong is in two movements. The first is almost relentlessly active and intense. In the end, though, it does Menahem Pressler, James Tocco, Gilbert Kalish, and Awadagin Pratt; violists relent, and in a gesture akin to exhaustion, comes to a halt. The second movement, which follows without Michael Tree, Paul Neubauer and Kim Kashkashian; cellists David Soyer, Peter Wiley, Stephen Isserlis, David pause, is in contrast, distant and calm — after an excited dance, a quiet song. Here, the violin sings one Finckel, Michel Strauss, and Yehuda Hanani, clarinetists James Campbell and Wolfgang Meyer, flutist Julius long line, without a single breath from beginning to end. Baker, and many others from a long list of internationally renowned artists. If opposites attract, then these two movements should be inseparable, for in almost every way do they oppose Berick’s many festival and chamber series’ credits include Marlboro, Ravinia, Seattle, Vancouver, Ottawa, one another. Whereas the first movement is forceful in character, the second is gentle. While in the first movement Jerusalem, El Paso, Maui, Domaine Forget (Canada), Great Lakes (Michigan), Chamber Players of Canada, the pulse is steady, in the second, it is flexible. The first movement is extroverted, the second introverted — the first Close Encounters with Music (Great Barrington, MA), Giverny (France), Leicester (U.K.), Moritzburg (Germany), angular, the second fluid — active, static — staccato, legato. The first movement is predominantly polyphonic, Festival of the Sound (Canada), Lapland (Sweden), Riihimaki (Finland), Strings in the Mountains (Colorado), the second homophonic — worldly, otherworldly — tense, relaxed — rough, smooth — instrumental, vocal. Alpenglow (Colorado), Music and Beyond (Ottawa), Four seasons (North Carolina), Agassiz (Winnipeg), Kfar Since the medium of music is time, and since time moves only forward, the relationship between the Blum (Israel), Killington (Vermont), and Bowdoin (Maine). two movements is not symmetrical. Although their opposing qualities are balanced, they are not equal. The Berick is a member of the Los Angeles Piano Quartet. He previously held the position of co-artistic direc- second movement is heard, felt, and understood in terms of the movement that precedes it. Because of the tor of the Quebec Chamber Music Society. Touring as a chamber musician with Musicians from Marlboro, forcefulness of the first movement, the sense of gentleness in the second movement is increased. After the The Lortie-Berick-Lysy Piano Trio, the Huberman String Quartet, Concertante Chamber Players, The Walden excitement of the first, there is the calm of the second. It is in this sense that the second movement — after Chamber Players, and other chamber ensembles, he has been featured in the world’s most important music which the piece is named — is an aftersong. Its song-like lyricism is felt all the more through its contrast to centers including London’s Wigmore Hall, Paris’s Musee du Louvre, Milan’s Sala Verdi, Carnegie Hall and the the first movement, which is percussive, marked and almost never lyrical. Does the process, though, work in Kennedy Center, among others. reverse? That is, does the second movement in any way act on the first in a similar manner? Yes it does, but On CD, Berick has recorded for the Centaur, Summit, Gasparo, Acoma, JMC and Helicon labels. His its force is much weaker for its action exists only in the echoes of memory. recording with the Amici ensemble, entitled Contrasts, has won rave reviews in the Canadian press. The work is written for and dedicated to Anne-Sophie Mutter. Berick is equally sought after as violin teacher and chamber music mentor. Prior to his appointment —Sebastian Currier as Professor of Violin at the University of Michigan, he served on the faculties of McGill University and the the Curtis Institute, Juilliard, Eastman, Oberlin, Peabody and the New England Conservatory. A graduate of Eastman School of Music. He has been invited as teacher and artist-in-residence at the Bowdoin Music the Interlochen Arts Academy and student of Michael Coonrod, Melton is a summer faculty member at the Festival, Killington Music Festival, The Shouse Institute, The Beethoven Seminar, Music@Menlo, Keshet Interlochen Arts Camp.