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I n T h e M i d d l e O f T h i n g s Chamber Music By MICHAEL ZEV GORDON JULIAN BLISS CLARINET FIDELIO TRIO Fragments from a Diary (2005) 21. A Small Folly (2002/2016) [6:32] In the Middle of Things for clarinet, violin and piano for clarinet, violin, cello and piano Chamber Music by 1. br eakable objects [0:46] 22. In the Middle of Things (2014) [15:12] (b. 1963) 2. the me has come to have a home [1:08] Michael Zev Gordon 3. all too brief [0:26] for violin, cello and piano 4. ...And those who are beauful, oh who can retain them?... [1:35] Total playing me [70:16] 5. elegiac [1:04] Julian Bliss clarinet 6. ...you can sll catch the echo [2:28] Fidelio Trio 7. Listen my heart, as only saints have listened [3:45] Darragh Morgan violin Adi Tal cello 8. False Relaons (1994) [10:22] Mary Dullea piano for violin and piano 9. Grace (1999) [3:22] for violin and piano 10. Roseland (2008) [8:56] for cello and piano Three Short Pieces for Clarinet (2016) 11. A Lotus Flower [3:24] 12. Un canto di sospiri [2:44] 13. Freilach [1:15] About The Fidelio Trio: Diary Pieces 2015 ‘[...] the Fidelio Trio give a performance for piano 14. Long Time [0:48] of terrific impetus and refinement’ 15. Shining Day [0:33] Gramophone 16. Another Space [1:20] 17. Summer Waltz [1:06] About Julian Bliss: 18. A Line of Light [0:17] 19. Grilli [1:18] ‘Poise, agility and alertness permeate 20. Epitaph [1:43] these winning, infecous performances’ BBC Music Magazine In the Middle of Things present, and quesons what wholeness or unity in art is. But my overriding reason for One of my recurring aims as a composer bringing all these elements together is not has been to take the listener on different driven by stylisc experiment, but rather by kinds of musical journey that begin in a strongly expressive urge. The way my places perhaps quite known and familiar, music twists and turns, sways and churns, but move towards something which, I is about trying to embody the many strains hope, is less familiar, even strange. The of human passions. But equally, the journeys idea of ‘seeing the familiar as strange’, I make are, more oen than not, also to do stretches back to the Romanc vision with a desire to sll the passionate. of the late eighteenth-century German philosopher Novalis (1772–1801). But The first work on this compilaon, Fragments the wish to write music that lis the from a Diary, is a collecon of small, listener beyond the everyday is mine disparate pieces, and exemplifies my inclusive too – even if the twenty-first century aesthec. The first piece, ‘breakable objects’, musical means and materials by which I is itself a collecon of even nier slivers, am trying to do this are rather different. starng with something that recalls eighteenth-century classicism, but rapidly Oen the starng point of my work is dissolves into the contemporary. But most quite simple – short, graspable melodic of all this piece is expressive of a recurring phrases, harmonies that recall tonality character in my music: the fragile. The or modality, the feel of something second piece, ‘the me has come to have gradually unfolding. But as the ideas a home’, is a quotaon from a poem by are elaborated, they move into choppier, the Italian writer Primo Levi (1919–1987), harmonically ambiguous, and indeed, wrien just aer the end of World War 2. at mes, atonal waters. As well as this, His extraordinary tesmony to the horrors strangeness has to do with the way of the Holocaust is well known. Here, the materials can be sharply juxtaposed, poem is about an urgent need to find , fragmented or mul-layered. The wish security following those horrors; my to include the tonal and atonal in the musical analogy evokes Klezmer, originally Michael Zev Gordon (Photography: Claire Shovelton) same work – to be lyrical but also to Eastern European Jewish music of break up singing lines – reflects celebraon, but from a post-war perspecve, something, perhaps, of our pluralist it always has for me a nge of something James Francis Brown Photography: Liz Isles lost. No. 3, ‘all too brief’, is indeed over in also to its form. The music I quote is from False Relaons, and its intended gracefulness Capturing in music an external image, or the less than a minute, a snatch of a folksong a Pavana by the Late Renaissance lutenist stems too from the lilng metre in groups mood aached to it, has been fruiul for me. of the imaginaon, while No. 4, ‘…And those composer Robert Johnson (1583–1633), a of three, a predilecon of mine. Gentleness But as with a favourite work of mine, Claude who are beauful, oh who can retain them’, piece itself arranged for keyboard by also lies at the core of Roseland for cello Debussy’s (1862–1918) Preludes for piano – comes from another favourite poet of Giles Farnaby (c. 1563–1640) and found in and piano. But its series of fragments, in which the tles are placed in brackets at mine, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926). The the keyboard collecon known as the the stops and starts, the deflecons from the end – I see my music poised between line suggests fleengness and loss, and Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. My work is in one kind of material to another, tell more the figurave and abstract; this is also my the music, for piano solo, at first dances part a kind of dreaming of this early music, of an ongoing search for tranquility, rather favourite kind of art. In the first of my Three on the spot, then gives way to a ny, somemes quite clearly, at other mes than a straighorward expression of it. Short Pieces for Clarinet, the lotus flower repeated, lyrical moment. Such poignancy more murkily, always fragmentarily. But Some of these materials allude to other of the tle gave me a starng image, a sense is given another kind of inflecon in No. 5, as the ancient increasingly rubs shoulders music, and there are three direct of delicacy and also a Buddhist symbol of ‘elegiac’, while No. 6 responds again to a with the modern, the music takes ever quotaons – from the jazz standard My enlightenment sproung forth from darkness. quote from Rilke, ‘…you can sll catch more unstable turns. The tle might be Funny Valenne, from a Jewish liturgical But once the piece was begun, it was as the echo’. This is the fastest and most seen to refer, then, to apparent tensions chant, and, at the end of the piece, from much the musical paerns, growing, varying, elaborate piece of the set, opening up, between these two worlds. Yet it is also the first song of Robert Schumann’s morphing, that I worked with. This worked as I see it, like a flower bud, giving rise the term given to an especially beauful, (1810–1956) Dichterliebe. This last similarly with the idea and shape of a sigh to a kind of vigorous dance, only to bier-sweet kind of dissonance, much emerges out of the mof heard at the in No. 2, 'Un canto di sospiri' – also a nod to close down again, ending where it favoured in music of the English very start of the piece, as though a Luigi Nono’s (1924–1990) Il canto sospeso; began, on a simple triad. The final Renaissance; and the exquisite example memory, long lost, is for a moment while the final ‘Freilach’, a type of Klezmer piece, ‘Listen my heart, as only saints of this from the Pavana creates an recovered. Such thoughts about the dance, starts in that world, but the modes have listened’, another Levi line, gives underlying link to the harmonic flavour emoonal power, yet fleeng fragility, and shapes that the music goes through are focus for me to the whole work. A very of my work. Perhaps the relaons between of memory has been a recurring theme more of my own. The Diary Pieces 2015 for slow chordal litany leads to music of great, these styles and idenes are closer, in my music. But, as here, it oen also piano are rooted sll more in personal expressive intensity, but in that passion less ‘false’, than first thought. combines with the desire to sele into images and experiences. A hot summer something of the sllness I am searching calm – where memory ceases to be a spent in Italy contributes to Nos. 2, 5 and for is also touched upon. The over-riding harmonic colour of Grace restless tug. And the very close of the 6; No. 7 is a response to the death of a is also one that hovers betwixt and between piece indeed seles onto a triad, if in its relave. But the personal here is also about False Relaons for violin and piano was – seemingly quite modal, but never quite not-quite-resolved second inversion my love of other music, and the wish to my first piece deliberately to mix together fully resolving and spiced with occasional voicing. This moment of serenity chimes juxtapose different musical sources: a music of different styles, and the darkening chromacism. But this piece – with my personal experience of a strip Bach-like invenon in No. 1, minimalisc movement between my ‘new’ music originally composed for a Faber Music of land in Cornwall, which gives the piece stasis in No.