Contemporary Music 2013 Festival Of
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festival of contemporary music 2013 august 8 – 12, 2013 MUSIC CENTER TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER an activity of the Boston Symphony Orchestra Mark Volpe , Eunice and Julian Cohen Managing Director, endowed in perpetuity Ellen Highstein , Edward H. Linde Tanglewood Music Center Director, endowed by Alan S. Bressler and Edward I. Rudman Tanglewood Music Center Staff Library Dormitory John Perkel Jon Anderson Andrew Leeson Budget and Office Manager Melissa Steinberg Alexis Benson Orchestra Librarians TMC Resident Advisors Karen Leopardi Associate Director for Faculty and Steve Skov Guest Artists Head Librarian, Copland Library Audio Department Michael Nock Audrey Dunne Tim Martyn Associate Director for Student Affairs Assistant Librarian, Copland Library Technical Director/Chief Engineer Gary Wallen Douglas McKinnie Associate Director for Scheduling and Production Audio Engineer, Head of Live Sound Production John Morin Charlie Post Stage Manager, Seiji Ozawa Hall Chief Audio Engineer, Ozawa Hall Ryland Bennett Nicholas Squire 2013 SUMMER STAFF Assistant Stage Manager, Seiji Ozawa Audio Engineer and Assistant Radio Hall Engineer Administrative Benjamin Honeycutt Joel Watts Eric Dluzniewski Andrew Minguez Associate Audio Engineer Scheduling Assistant Peter Lillpopp Amelia Ross Piano Front Desk Assistant Gilbert Spencer Adam Wing Steve Carver Bridget Sawyer-Revels Chief Piano Technician Artist Assistant/Driver Stage Assistants, Seiji Ozawa Hall Barbara Renner Jason Varvaro Chief Piano Technician Personnel Manager 2013 BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA FACULTY Members of the Boston Edwin Barker Sato Knudsen James Sommerville Symphony Orchestra partici - Cathy Basrak Julianne Lee § Tamara Smirnova § pate in the daily activities Daniel Bauch Ronan Lefkowitz* § Jason Snider of the Tanglewood Music Bonnie Bewick § Ben Levy John Stovall Center, giving master classes Marshall Burlingame* Malcolm Lowe § Richard Svoboda* § and repertoire classes, per - Glen Cherry Jim Markey Michael Wayne forming with our orchestra, Rachel Childers Thomas Martin* Lawrence Wolfe Wesley Collins Cynthia Meyers Benjamin Wright leading sectional rehearsals, Jules Eskin Suzanne Nelsen Owen Young and coaching chamber John Ferrillo Toby Oft* Michael Zaretsky music. The following players Clint Foreman James Orleans Jessica Zhou* will be working with the TMC Edward Gazouleas* Richard Ranti during the 2013 season (fac - Rebecca Gitter Thomas Rolfs* ulty confirmed as of 7/15/13). Gregg Henegar Elizabeth Rowe* Jason Horowitz § Mike Roylance* * indicates section represen - The Instrumental and J. William Hudgins* Richard Sebring* tative Orches tral Studies Program Mihail Jojatu* Todd Seeber* § participating in the Malcolm § Lowe Violin Seminar, a Steven Ansell Elita Kang Robert Sheena* project of the Kitte Sporn Martha Babcock Mickey Katz Thomas Siders Mentorship Program 2013 FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC Thursday, August 8, through Monday, August 12, 2013 Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Festival Director An activity of the TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER Works presented at this year’s Festival of Contemporary Music were prepared under the guidance of the following Tanglewood Music Center Faculty and guests: Pierre-La urent Aimard Linda Hall Benjamin Schwartz Stefan Asbury Kayo Iwama Lucy Shelton George Benjamin Andrew Jennings Marco Stroppa Stephen Drury Christian Mason Howard Watkins Norman Fischer n e s o R e v e t S The 2013 Festival of Contemporary Music has been endowed in perpetuity by the generosity of Dr. Raymond and Mrs. Hannah H. Schneider, with additional support in 2013 from the Amphion Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Fromm Music Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Ernst von Siemens Foundation, and the Helen F. Whitaker Fund. With the friendly support of is the exclusive provider of pianos for Tanglewood. The Tanglewood Music Center gratefully acknowledges The Studley Press, Inc. , Dalton, MA, for printing this program. 2013 FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC Festival Overview 3 Festival Director Pierre-Laurent Aimard 4 In Memoriam Elliott Carter 5 Thursday, August 8, at 6, Ozawa Hall 8 New Fromm Players Elliott Carter’s String Quartet No. 1 Thursday, August 8, at 8, Ozawa Hall 11 TMC Fellows, Faculty, and Guests Music of Christian Mason, Marco Stroppa, Elliott Carter, and Helmut Lachenmann Friday, August 9, at 2:30, Ozawa Hall 23 Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Marco Stroppa, the JACK Quartet, and New Fromm Players Music of Elliott Carter, Helmut Lachenmann, and Marco Stroppa Saturday, August 10, at 2:30, Theatre 28 TMC Fellows and New Fromm Players; Elizabeth Keusch, soprano; Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Stephen Drury, pianos Music of Marco Stroppa, Helmut Lachenmann, and Elliott Carter Sunday, August 11, at 10am, Ozawa Hall 33 TMC Fellows and Guests; the New Fromm Players Music of György Ligeti, Conlon Nancarrow, Marco Stroppa, and Steve Reich Monday, August 12, at 8pm 41 TMC Fellows; George Benjamin, conductor George Benjamin’s opera Written on Skin , concert performance (American premiere) Annotators: Christian Carey, Frank J. Oteri, Zoe Kemmerling, Robert Kirzinger, Jean-Pascal Vachon Program copyright ©2013 Boston Symphony Orchestra, Inc. Program notes are copyright ©2013 to the individual authors. All rights reserved. 2 The 2013 Festival of Contemporary Music This year ’s FCM, curated by pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, features three composers prominently. The great Elliott Carter ’s two final works, completed last year, will be performed— Instances for orchestra (Thursday evening, August 8, at 8), and Epigrams for piano trio (Friday, August 9, at 2:30) —along with his String Quartet No. 1 (8/8 at 6), and Mr. Aimard, a longtime champion of his music, will perform several of his solo piano pieces (Saturday, 8/10, at 2:30 in the Theatre). Helmut Lachenmann and Marco Stroppa, each represented by several works, both exemplify important currents of new music in Europe. Mr. Lachenmann has been at the forefront of extended techniques and new rhetoric of acoustic sound, and Mr. Stroppa is significant in expanding the range of sound via electronics and technology. A longtime Tanglewood presence, George Benjamin, will conduct his substantial new opera Written on Skin , which has garnered great acclaim since its premiere in July 2012, and receives its American premiere in a concert per formance to close the FCM Monday evening at 8. Also featured is a new work by the English composer Christian Mason, an emerging composer (and former George Benjamin pupil) exploring his own unique sonic landscapes. His piece Years of Light , commissioned by the TMC, receives its world premiere on Thursday evening ’s 8 o ’clock concert. On Sunday, August 11, at 10am in Ozawa Hall, Steve Reich ’s Music for 18 Musicians , one of the seminal works of modern music, will be performed alongside pattern- and phrase-oriented music of György Ligeti—his Monument–Self-portrait– Movement for two pianos—and a two-piano transcription by Thomas Adès of Conlon Nancarrow ’s player-piano Studies Nos. 6 and 7. Guest performers of the TMC Fellows, New Fromm Players, and faculty include Mr. Aimard; the JACK Quartet, known for its intrepid forays into many an unknown new-music wonderland, playing Lachenmann ’s Grido ; soprano Elizabeth Keusch, baritone Brian Church, and basset horn specialist Michele Marelli. Mr. Aimard discussed his thoughts on this year ’s FCM in video segments created for Tanglewood. His comments are transcribed below. To Tanglewood I ’ve tried to bring music that is not much played in the U.S.—especially two composers, there are two portraits: one of Helmut Lachenmann, who is in his seventies and a main German figure, and a portrait of Marco Stroppa, who is in his fifties, and a main Italian figure. Both of them invented new sounds, Lachenmann with instrumental music, but the instruments are used in unusual ways; and Stroppa, often with electronics, or with types of sounds that come from his experience with electronics. I wanted the audience at Tanglewood to discover more of both of them. Apart from that there is a major homage to Elliott Carter. We ’ll hear his two last pieces, and this will be the U.S. premiere of his last composed pieces, the twelve Epigrams . And there will be a big event: this will be the premiere in America of Written on Skin , the latest opera written by George Benjamin. I met Marco Stroppa in the mid-eighties, in America, in Boston. He was studying at MIT and I was on tour with Pierre Boulez and the Ensemble intercontemporain. I planned to play a piece by him for piano and elec - tronics in IRCAM [in Paris], and after this meeting I understood that this would be one of the major composers in my life. I found his music so powerful in imagination and realization; I found that he was so natural when he dealt with computer music as with instrumental music. I felt that the strength of his intellect, of his ability to organize music was so convincing that this would be a major thing in my life, and I ’m just happy to share this experience. Why Helmut Lachenmann ’s music is so fascinating: he composes most of the time with sounds that are unusual. You produce any kind of sounds that are outside of the academic sounds that are taught in all the conservatories. Then you think, this should be a music like music of the sixties or seventies, a nice “happen - ing” experience, but after a couple of minutes you realize that the music your hear is so fascinating, so intense, so incredibly well organized, the phrases, the form, the situations are so strong, that you are facing one of the greatest creators on earth, who is able to face a major challenge: how can I write big compositions with a mate rial that is supposed to be done for no compositions at all. They are varied compositions at Tanglewood: for voice and piano, for string quartet, for ensemble with basset horn, etc. So the goal of course is to present several facets of the creation of this big composer. At the end, I think what is very special, you have a feeling that you hear a music that is really in the stomach, that comes from the center of the human being.