Miller Theatre at Columbia University 2014-15 | 26th Season

Bach, Revisited Helmut Lachenmann + Bach Ensemble Signal Rachel Calloway, mezzo-soprano Kelli Kathman, flute Lauren Radnofsky, cello Ari Streisfeld,

Thursday, April 9, 8:00 p.m. From the Executive Director

We kick off April with a musical tour-de-force pairing Helmut Lachenmann and J.S. Bach. We’ve challenged Ensemble Signal to perform repertoire that bridges the centuries, and the soloists Lauren Radnofsky and Ari Streisfeld are taking the challenge to its most extreme.

Bach’s sonatas and partitas for solo violin and the cello suites are among the most widely performed solo works for strings. They are deeply moving, incredibly difficult, and have come to represent the pinnacle of achievement for many string players. Though it may be surprising to modern listeners, Bach introduced techniques that transformed how we understand these instruments. Lachenmann’s dedication to that quest is evident tonight with his solo works Toccatina and Pression. Like Bach, his works place enormous demands on the performers, including a variety of special techniques to produce a sonic palette that goes far beyond the traditional sound of bow over strings.

On April 23, we’ll celebrate Anna Clyne at the final concert in this season’s Composer Portraits series. The works on the program span a decade, a fitting showcase of her riveting compositions.

We’ll close the Bach, Revisited series – and Miller’s 2015-16 season – with Sofia Gubaidulina + Bach on May 8. The pairing is a natural fit: Gubaidulina has expressed a devotion to Bach, and the music of both blends compositional rigor and emotional transcendence.

It’s been an incredible 2014-15 season at Miller Theatre! Whether you joined us at the sold-out opening night with eight blackbird in September, a new work premiere during Composer Portraits, or a free Pop-Up concert, it has been a great pleasure sharing incredible music with you. Of course, I can’t wait to share the 2015-16 season! We’ll announce the news to our email list very soon, so be sure to sign up on our website. Thank you for being part of our adventurous community.

Melissa Smey Executive Director

Please note that photography and the use of recording devices are not permitted. Remember to turn off all cellular phones and pagers before tonight’s performance begins. Miller Theatre is ADA accessible. Large print programs are available upon request. For more information or to arrange accommodations, please call 212-854-7799. Miller Theatre at Columbia University 2014-15 | 26th Season

Bach, Revisited Thursday, April 9, 8:00 p.m. Helmut Lachenmann + Bach Ensemble Signal

Allemande and Sarabande from Suite No. 5 in C Minor, BWV 1011 J.S. Bach Lauren Radnofsky, cello (1685-1750)

Third Part for J.S. Bach’s two-part Invention in D minor (1985) Helmut Lachenmann Kelli Kathman, flute; Lauren Radnofsky, cello (b. 1935) Ari Streisfeld, violin

Toccatina (1986) Lachenmann Ari Streisfeld, violin

Pression (1969-70) Lachenmann Lauren Radnofsky, cello

INTERMISSION

Chaconne from Violin Partita in D minor, BWV 1004 Bach Ari Streisfeld, violin

TemA (1968) Lachenmann Rachel Calloway, mezzo-soprano; Kelli Kathman, flute Lauren Radnofsky, cello

This program runs approximately ninety minutes, including intermission.

Major support for Bach, Revisited is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts. About the Program

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Allemande and Sarabande from Suite No. 5 in C Minor for solo cello, BWV 1011 Bach almost certainly had occasion to write his six cello suites during his time at the court of the young Prince Leopold of Cöthen, when he was in his mid-thirties. The prince, a Calvinist, had no need of church music, but evidently looked forward to instrumental works by his composer – and evidently had skilled musicians to play them. Nothing quite like these cello suites had existed before, and nothing quite like them—searchings of the cello, by itself, and searchings of the spirit, one might say, through the cello—appeared again until the twentieth century.

A particular feature of this Fifth Suite is the tuning of the top string down from A to G, which Bach introduced perhaps to facilitate some sonorous and often dark chords (though the piece can be played with normal tuning). This is a grave work, especially in its two big slow dances, the allemande and sarabande. The sarabande is one of the few movements in the suites to be entirely in one part, and is unusual, too, in being almost entirely in one rhythmic value, the slow flow of quavers pausing only occasionally. It is primal melody.

Helmut Lachenmann (b. 1935) Third Part for J. S. Bach’s Two-Part Invention in D minor, BWV 775 (1985) In placing solo string pieces by Bach alongside solo string pieces by Lachenmann, this program emphasizes at once affiliation and difference. The difference is inevitable, between two composers born a century and a half apart; the affiliation may be felt in a sensitivity to the particular sound and technique of the instrument, in a strength of line, and in a shadow of dance.

Here, though, the connection is different, as Lachenmann writes music that Bach could have written but did not, adding to a two-part invention a third part that is new, written in 1980, and at the same time old, realizing something implicit in the original. Another sympathetic twist is in the scoring. Bach intended his inventions for keyboard players; Lachenmann, for once writing music where pitch, not timbre, is paramount, leaves the instrumentation free. Toccatina (1986) The diminutive title suits the scale of this piece, which plays for under five minutes, and also its sound, which is generally at a low level, drawing us into its fineness. Atoccata is, etymologically, music of touch, and Lachenmann, ever the traditionalist, alludes to the term appropriately, while redefining how this touch takes place. Most of the sounds, high and featherlight, are produced by tapping on the strings with the screw at one end of the bow. To begin with, the left hand stays in one position, holding a chord whose notes subtly resonate after each tap; there are also occasional pizzicatos. Then the ex- tremely delicate background harmony starts to change. Later still, the musician moves on to explore other parts of the instrument: the strings at the bridge and beyond, one of the tuning pegs, and the scroll. The end, however, makes a gentle return.

Composed in 1986, Toccatina comes from a time when Lachenmann had moved on from the revolution of temA and Pression to retrieve aspects of older music, within the perspective he had gained, while the cherishing of small sounds, highly defined, can be found in his work from any period.

Pression (1969-70) This work of 1969-70 was among Lachenmann’s early explorations of a new music of sounds produced by irregular techniques. At the start, for example, the composer’s directions indicate how the bow is to be held in the right fist while the left hand’s fingers produce whispering glissandos of quasi-harmonics; the effect is of quiet respiration or the gentlest breeze, in a pianissimo to which the piece often returns.

Though the music is produced under pressure (in French, pression)­—literally, in that it is the pressure of bow and fingers that produces the sound, and figuratively, in the tension any performance is likely to generate—it is predominantly delicate. A venerable instrument is found to have quite unexpected resources. Things that would be slips under other circumstances are now striven for, and rendered as objects of beauty. Lachenmann’s reference to such pieces as “instrumental musique concrète” evokes how this is a music of sounds, not notes. But he has also remarked that the listening experience becomes concrete because “one hears under what conditions, with what materials, with what energies, and against what (mechanical) resistances each sound or noise is produced.”

As to form, Pression reproduces the process of discovery by which it was made: a performance possibility is explored, as at the opening, until it leads into, is invaded

About the Program by, or summons another possibility, all showing an invigorating sonic imagination and sense of drama. Any sound, in Lachenmann’s view, comes with formal properties, arising partly from the tradition in which it is being composed, performed, and experienced, and partly from its physical nature. Among the types Lachenmann distinguishes is the “cadence sound”: a loud pizzicato from which an upward rustle escapes. An example duly appears at the end of this ten-minute piece.

Johann Sebastian Bach Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D minor for solo violin, BWV 1004 Bach may still have been fresh from school, and in his first job, as a violinist at the ducal court in , when he set about writing a set of six solo pieces for violin, three each of sonatas and partitas, possibly for himself to perform. (We have the word of his son Carl Phillip Emanuel—though much later, of course—that he played the instrument “cleanly and penetratingly.”) He was at Weimar for only a few months, during which he turned eighteen, before he was off to a better position, but the stay was long enough for him to learn from a senior musician, Johann Paul von Westhoff, who had published a dozen partitas for solo violin twenty years before.

No doubt Bach fiddled over the years with what he had written, before making a fair copy in 1720, when he was at Cöthen. This manuscript survives, complete with its title page, on which we can read his inscription: “Sei Solo,” then “Violino senza Basso accompagnato,” then, with the tantalizing suggestion that there could have been more, “Libro Primo,” followed by a signature and date.

The great finale to the fourth piece in the set opens in the rhythm of asarabande : slow, heavy, triple. But this is a dance also of another kind, on a repeating four-bar theme that descends from D to A, ready to make a rising cadence back to D: the inexorably circling, purposefully driving bass of the chaconne. Sixty-four times it comes, on through a middle section in the major (variations 34-52), all the time supporting counterpoint that implies up to seven simultaneous lines, until finally the voices spiral into the keynote. Brahms (one of several composers to adapt the work, in his case for piano left hand) had this to say: “If I were to imagine that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.” Playing for around a quarter of an hour, the movement can ably stand by itself. Helmut Lachenmann temA (1968) This was Lachenmann’s 1968 moment. Here, in this trio, he ventured for the first time fully into an art of sounds – an art, too, of the high-pressure actions by which sounds are to be made and the high-pressure gestures they will correspondingly evoke. The title is the Italian word for “theme,” but Lachenmann’s orthography creates a pun with the German “Atem,” or “breath.” This is music of breath, for the cello as much as the voice and flute. It is also instrumental music, for the voice as much as the flute and cello, as Lachenmann indicates by giving the voice no pre-eminence but listing it with the others in descending order of register: “temA, for flute, voice, and cello.” The incongruities in the trio, the roughnesses, help give the piece its life: these are three individuals who, though thoroughly disparate, find ways to make contact, to communicate with each other and with we who listen.

Non-standard means of sound production predominate, sounds that are frayed or strained, scorched or blistered by their own heat, and yet all the time fiercely expressive, while also displaying the extreme virtuosity the piece demands, in terms of precise con- trol and, indeed, beauty. There are urgent solos, as well as places where it is possible for everyone to participate, until about two-thirds of the way through the fifteen-minute composition things come to a head. What happens thereafter is partly expected, partly not, for the message of the coda is the message that is being delivered all through: out of inarticulacy, articulacy is born.

-Program notes by Paul Griffiths

About the Program About the Artists

Helmut Lachenmann (born Nov. 27, and Jeremy Denk’s The Classical Style at 1935 in Stuttgart, Germany) studied Carnegie Hall (Zankel), the world pre- piano, theory, and counterpoint at the Mu- miere of Donnacha Dennehy’s The Hun- sic Conservatory in Stuttgart from 1955 ger with Alarm Will Sound in St. Louis, to 1958, and from 1958 to 1960 he studied the music of John Zorn at The Cloisters, composition with Luigi Nono in Venice. the world premiere of Jeff Myers’Re - The first public performances of Lachen- quiem Aeternam with JACK Quartet, mann’s works took place at the Biennale and performances with Ekmeles. She is in Venice in 1962 and at the International a nominee for Carnegie Hall’s inaugural Summer Courses for New Music in Darm- Warner Music Prize. She has sung works stadt. Lachenmann has received numer- by many of today’s leading composers, in- ous awards for his compositional work, cluding Unsuk Chin, Gabriela Lena Frank, including the Siemens Musikpreis in 1997, Oliver Knussen, and Nico Muhly. the Royal Philharmonic Society Award London in 2004, the Berliner Kunstpreis Flutist Kelli Kathman is active as a and the Leone d’oro of the Biennale di soloist, chamber, and orchestral musi- Venezia in 2008, and the BBVA “Frontiers cian. Best known for her interpretations of Knowledge” Award for Contemporary of music of our day, she has collaborated Music in 2011. He is an honorary doctor with ensembles such as Signal, Alarm at the Music Conservatory Hannover and Will Sound, eighth blackbird, the Bang on a member of the Academies of the Arts a Can All-Stars, Wordless Music Orches- in Berlin, Brussels, Hamburg, Leipzig, tra and the International Contemporary Mannheim, and Munich. He also writes Ensemble. Recent Festival appearances extensively on music. include the Holland Festival, Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, Cham- Mezzo-soprano Rachel Calloway has ber Music Northwest, Sacrum Profanum been praised by the New York Times for Festival and the NY Electrocacoustic her “penetrating clarity” and “consider- Music Festival. She has recorded for able depth of expression” and by Opera Nonesuch, Warp Records, Naxos, Mode, News for her “adept musicianship and Cantaloupe, and New Amsterdam Re- dramatic flair.” Season highlights include cords. Her passion for new music has the New York premiere of Steven Stucky brought her to work with composers including Steve Reich, John Adams, Julia himself as a leader in contemporary Wolfe, Michael Gordon, and others. Kelli classical music. A founding member of the holds degrees from The Eastman School internationally acclaimed JACK Quartet, of Music and Yale University and cur- Mr. Streisfeld has performed in the rently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. world’s leading concert halls and festivals She has performed with Signal since its including Wigmore Hall (London), Teatro beginnings in 2009. Colon (Argentina), Suntory Hall (Tokyo), Carnegie Hall, The Miller Theatre, and Lauren Radnofsky is founding cellist the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland). and co-Artistic/Executive director of En- He has collaborated with many of semble Signal. In her triple role as cellist today’s most prominent composers and co-Artistic/Executive Director, she including Helmut Lachenmann, John manages all aspects of Signal’s varied sea- Luther Adams, Matthias Pintscher, son, including repertoire, program design, Georg Friedrich Haas, Steve Reich, and and project management; in addition to Salvatore Sciarrino. He has performed being a regular performer in the ensemble. with Signal since its beginnings in 2009. With Signal, she has worked with com- posers including Helmut Lachenmann, Ensemble Signal, described by the Steve Reich, Oliver Knussen, Michael New York Times as “one of the most Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe and vital groups of its kind,” is a New York- has appeared at venues and festivals in- based ensemble. Since its debut in 2008, cluding Lincoln Center Festival, Tangle- the Ensemble has performed over 100 wood, Ojai Music Festival, Carnegie Hall, concerts and has given the New York, (le) Poisson Rouge, and the Bang on a Can world, or U.S. premieres of over 20 works. Marathon. As a soloist, she has appeared Signal was founded by Co-Artistic/ with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra Executive Director Lauren Radnofsky performing Kaija Saariaho’s Amers and and Co-Artistic Director/Conductor Brad the Wordless Music Orchestra in Jonny Lubman. A “new music dream team” Greenwood’s Doghouse for string trio and (Time Out New York), Signal regularly orchestra. She can be heard with Signal performs with Lubman and features a on harmonia mundi, Cantaloupe, New supergroup of independent artists from Amsterdam, and Orange Mountain; she the modern music scene. Signal has recently recorded Lachenman’s Pression performed at Lincoln Center Festival, BIG for Mode records. EARS Festival, Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, Ojai Music Festival, Miller Theatre, Praised for his “dazzling performance” Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Bang by the New York Times, violinist Ari on a Can Marathon. Streisfeld has quickly established About Miller Theatre

Miller Theatre at Columbia University is the leading presenter of new music in New York City and one of the most vital forces nationwide for innovative programming. In partnership with Columbia University School of the Arts, Miller is dedicated to producing and presenting unique events, with a focus on contemporary and early music, jazz, and multimedia. Founded in 1988, Miller has helped launch the careers of myriad composers and ensembles, serving as an incubator for emerging artists and a champion of those not yet well known in the U.S. A four- time recipient of the ASCAP/Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming, Miller continues to meet the high expectations set forth by its founders—to present innovative programs, support new work, and connect creative artists with adventurous audiences.

Advisory Committee Paul D. Carter Mark Jackson Margo Viscusi* Mary Sharp Cronson* Eric Johnson Mr. and Mrs. George Votis* Stephanie French* Philip Mindlin Cecille Wasserman* Marcella Tarozzi Goldsmith Linda Nochlin Elke Weber Karen Hagberg Peter Pohly I. Peter Wolff* * Miller Theatre Advisory Board member Columbia University Trustees Jonathan D. Schiller, Chair Lee C. Bollinger, Benjamin Horowitz A’Lelia Bundles, Vice Chair President of the University Ann F. Kaplan Noam Gottesman, Vice Chair William V. Campbell, Jonathan Lavine Mark E. Kingdon, Vice Chair Chair Emeritus Charles Li Esta Stecher, Vice Chair Lisa Carnoy Paul J. Maddon Rolando T. Acosta Kenneth Forde Vikram Pandit Armen A. Avanessians Joseph A. Greenaway, Jr. Michael B. Rothfeld Andrew F. Barth James Harden Claire Shipman Marc Holliday Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Columbia University School of the Arts Carol Becker Dean of Faculty Jana Hart Wright Dean of Academic Administration Miller Theatre Staff Melissa Smey Executive Director Charlotte Levitt Director of Marketing & Outreach Brenna St. George Jones Director of Production James Hirschfeld Business Manager Nora Sørena Casey Marketing & Communications Associate Megan Harrold Audience Services Manager Katherine Bergstrom Artistic Administrator Taylor Riccio Production Coordinator Rhiannon McClintock Executive Assistant

Aleba & Co. Public Relations The Heads of State Graphic Design Thanks to Our Donors Miller Theatre acknowledges with deep appreciation and gratitude the following organizations, individuals, and government agencies whose extraordinary support makes our programming possible.

$25,000 and above Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts Dow Jones Foundation H. F. (Gerry) Lenfest National Endowment for the Arts

$10,000 - $24,999 William V. Campbell Fritz Reiner Center for Contemporary Music The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation The Aaron Copland Fund for Music at Columbia University The Evelyn Sharp Foundation Mary Sharp Cronson The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Margo and Anthony Viscusi New York State Council on the Arts $5,000 - $9,999 The Amphion Foundation CLC Kramer Foundation Craig Silverstein Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation

$1,000 - $4,999 Rima Ayas Carol Avery Haber / Haber Family Jessie and Charles Price Barbara Batcheler Charitable Fund Peter Pohly Susan Boynton Karen Hagberg and Mark Jackson Christopher Rothko Paul D. Carter Donella and David Held J. P. Sullivan Hester Diamond Roger Lehecka Cecille Wasserman R. H. Rackstraw Downes Philip Mindlin Janet C. Waterhouse Marcella Tarozzi Goldsmith Linda Nochlin Elke Weber and Eric Johnson Christine and Thomas Griesa Jeanine and Roland Plottel Anonymous

$500 - $999 Oliver Allen Stephanie French Marian M. Warden Fund of the Foundation for Regula Aregger Claude Ghez Enhancing Communities Mercedes Armillas Mary and Gordon Gould Katharina Pistor ASCAP James P. Hanbury James Sharp Elaine S. Bernstein John Kander Cia Toscanini Cedomir Crnkovic / Cavali Foundation Mark Kempson and Janet Greenberg Kathryn Yatrakis Kristine and Joseph Delfausse Paul J. Maddon

$100 - $499 Gail and James Addiss June O. Goldberg Mary and Andrew Pinkowitz Edward Albee Richard Gray Edmée B. Reit Roger Bagnall Barbara Harris Monique Rinere in honor of James F. Rinere Sandra and Marc Bernstein Frances and Raymond Hoobler Carol Robbins Andrew Birsh Bernard Hoffer Esther Rosenberg and Michael Ostroff Jim Boorstein Alan Houston and Lisa DeLange William Ryall Alexandra Bowie and Daniel Richman Frank Immler and Andrew Tunick Mariam Said Elizabeth and Ralph Brown Sandra and Malcolm Jones Eliisa Salmi-Saslaw Caplan Family Foundation William Josephson James Schamus and Nancy Kricorian Richard Carrick and Nomi Levy-Carrick Rebecca Kennison Elliot Schwartz Rashmy Chatterjee L. Wilson Kidd, Jr. Anita Shapolsky Ginger Chinn and Reggie Spooner Sandra Kincaid Timothy C. Shepard and Andra Georges Gregory Cokorinos Barbara and Kenneth Leish Gilbert Spitzer and Janet Glaser Spitzer Merry Conway Arthur S. Leonard Peter Strauss Norma Cote Richard H. Levy and Lorraine Gallard Jim Strawhorn David Demnitz Peter C. Lincoln Larry Wehr Vishakha Desai and Robert Oxnam Patricia Lowy and Daniel Frank Seymour Weingarten Rosamund Else-Mitchell Caroline and Anthony Lukaszewski Ila and Dennis Weiss Peter and Joan Faber Marghretta McBean Elizabeth Wheeler Ruth Gallo Gerald McGee Anonymous Marc Gilman Susan Narucki as of January 20, 2015 Upcoming Events

Tuesday, April 14 doors at 5:30 p.m., music at 6:00 p.m. POP-UP CONCERTS Ensemble Signal

Thursday, April 23, 8:00 p.m. COMPOSER PORTRAITS Anna Clyne

Friday, May 8, 8:00 p.m. BACH, REVISITED Sofia Gubaidulina + Bach

Save the Date Tuesday, May 5, 7:00 p.m. SPRING SOIRÉE to benefit Miller Theatre Hosted by Jeanine & Roland Plottel The Cosmopolitan Club For more infomation email [email protected]

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