AE News 2 2015.Indd

Issue 2, 2015: April AE NEWS newsletter of the Australia Ensemble @UNSW Never Stand Still Music Performance Unit April Events Playing the last century It is no secret to the other members Australia Ensemble @UNSW of the Australia Ensemble that Free lunch hour concert Geoffrey Collins is very pleased Tuesday April 14, 2015 to be performing Martin Bresnick’s 1.10 - 2.00pm My Twentieth Century in the April Leighton Hall, Scientia Building subscription concert. Geoffrey last Haydn: Flute quartet Op.5 no.3 performed it in 2004 at the Australian Sculthorpe: String quartet no.8 Youth Orchestra’s National Music Ravel: Mother Goose suite arr. Camp in Canberra where Bresnick was composer-in-residence, and he Munro found it to be a very engaging piece. “It is much more transparent than Australia Ensemble @UNSW Bresnick’s previous works,” Geoffrey offered. “There is a trajectory that Free lunch hour workshop carries the listener through; it builds Thursday April 16, 2015 up and intensifi es over the course 1.10 - 2.00pm of the piece”. My Twentieth Century Leighton Hall, Scientia Building (2002) is scored for fl ute, clarinet, Violinist Dene Olding in a public piano, violin, viola and cello, but also masterclass with musicians from requires each of the instrumentalists UNSW to narrate passages from a text by Free, all welcome Bresnick’s friend and colleague Tom Andrews. Sadly, the poet died between Geoffrey Collins, fl ute Australia Ensemble @UNSW completing the work and its fi rst performance in 2002, due to complications from haemophilia, a condition Subscription Concert 2, 2015 which affected him from his teenage years and coloured the perspective of Saturday April 18, 2015 much of his poetry. An American critic, Guy Davenport, said “They [the poems] 8.00pm are about the dominion of the spirit when it is rich in imagination and courage”. Sir John Clancy Auditorium Some of the associations in the text illustrate very personal elements of the Bresnick: My Twentieth Century poet’s experience, including his thrill-seeking nature and love of motocross (‘I Sculthorpe: Irkanda IV loved Kawasaki in the twentieth century’) and his haemophilia (‘I shed pints Ravel: Duo for violin & cello of blood in the twentieth century’) giving the work a very literal as well as a broader fi gurative meaning. The poem was written specifi cally as a component Carter: Esprit rude, esprit doux of the composition, and was completed in July 2001, shortly before Andrews’ Elgar: Piano quintet unexpected death at age 40. The composer dedicated the work to Andrews’ [email protected] memory. Geoffrey Collins recalled that Bresnick was quite particular about the delivery of the text, aiming to ensure that the Australian speech patterns managed to capture the wistful character of Andrews’ poem, which the composer describes “as if in a heightened conversation”. The text itself is not complicated or intense; rather, comprising refl ective and quite intimate musings on twentieth century life. Perhaps Geoffrey shouldn’t have been too concerned about his skills of public speaking. The composer generously refl ected “I always love to hear the text Australian-accented. There was a wonderful performance at an AYO camp in Canberra in 2004 that I will always treasure - with musicians we will hear – Geoffrey Collins Geoffrey Collins, fl ute; Peter Handsworth, clarinet; Lisa (fl ute) will be joined by Associate Moore, piano; Peter Exton, violin; Brett Dean, viola; and Artist David Griffi ths (clarinet), Sarah Morse, cello.” Bresnick has strong connections with Dene Olding (violin), Irina Morozova Australia, including a recent period of residency with the (viola), Julian Smiles (cello) and Ian University of Western Australia on an Institute of Advanced Munro (piano). Refl ecting on her Studies Fellowship, as well as two residencies with the own twentieth century, violist Irina Australian Youth Orchestra. Morozova remembers herself as Bresnick is a well-established composer in the USA, having an opinionated young violinist, but written for fi lms, orchestras, chamber ensembles, voice, “puberty certainly brought a stop solo instruments, and in 2013 delved into opera with the to such overt behaviour”. Although production of My Friend’s Story, based on a story by Anton obviously a confi dent violist, public Chekhov. Since taking on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1969, speaking took greater personal he has published an extensive catalogue of works, and courage for Irina, but she has always been recipient of an extremely lengthy list of awards for aquitted herself adequately. “If I both composition and teaching. Among his own teachers have to act, raising my voice a tone of composition was the revered composer György Ligeti, or two makes it easier to ‘become’ a who was clearly a strong infl uence in his earlier work. different persona. With that in mind, Bresnick is presently the Professor of Composition and the prospect of speaking in the next Martin Bresnick Coordinator of the Composition Department at the Yale subscription concert does not hold School of Music. too many problems. However, negotiating my way from stand to stand, and in particular, not to lose my place in My Twentieth Century is, however, the fi rst of Bresnick’s the process could be a problem. It remains to be seen how works to be performed by the Australia Ensemble @ I do - why don’t you come and see?” UNSW. On this occasion, it will be the core members of the Ensemble whose sounds, both instrumental and vocal, Sonia Maddock Ravel’s pas de deux The death of France’s leading composer, Claude of Daphnis & Chloe or the uniquely Gallic neo-Classical Debussy, in 1918, inspired a commemorative issue of chic of Le Tombeau de Couperin. The average listener La Revue Musicale, which commissioned works in his would be hard put to identify the fi rst movement as memory. It spawned a spate of compositions from a fi eld of being by Ravel - it is not until the pizzicati of the second thoroughbreds: Béla Bartók, Paul Dukas, Manuel de Falla, movement, reminiscent of the scherzo of the String Eugene Goossens, Albert Roussel, Igor Stravinsky, Eric Quartet, that there is a similarity to his more familiar style. Satie and Maurice Ravel. Other major features are the intricate alternations of major/ Ravel, who was universally minor keys and Eastern European considered to have assumed folk song infl uences in the fi nal two Debussy’s mantle, offered a single movements. movement work for violin and cello. The violinist at the work’s premiere, He subsequently regarded it as Helene Jourdan-Morhange, felt unfi nished business and, during pushed to the limit by Ravel’s the summer of 1921, revisited perfectionist approach to ensemble. the score. The expansion of the “It’s complicated,” she said. “In movement into a full-scale sonata order to keep my end up, the cello did not progress smoothly. “This has to sound like a fl ute and the devil of a duo makes me extremely violin like a drum. It must be fun ill,” the normally inscrutable writing such diffi cult stuff, but no composer revealed. He eventually one except virtuosos are going to completed the four movement work play it.” in February 1922. Never lost for an acerbic retort, Ravel achieved a new idiom, which, Ravel replied, “Good! Then it won’t consciously or otherwise, refl ected be assassinated by amateurs!” the style of Debussy’s own late The Australia Ensemble’s husband masterpieces: terse, hauntingly Maurice Ravel and wife members Julian Smiles spare and emotionally restrained to and Dimity Hall are the very much the point of elusiveness. professional soloists on this occasion. What do they make He wrote, “I believe this sonata marks a turning point in my of the work? Some of their comments seem to echo those career. In it, thinness of texture is pushed to the extreme. above. Harmonic charm is renounced with an increasingly “We’ve played it before. It’s amazingly spare and tightly conspicuous reaction in favour of melody.” interwoven yet with intermittent explosions and lyrical The idiom is very different from the luxuriant impressionism interludes,” Dimity said. Julian added that there were Scientifi c research on identical twins notwithstanding, taxing passages for both players no other human association seems to attract as much in unusual registers which created creative speculation about psychological dynamics as unique effects and others where the string quartets. Witness the recent art house hit A Late melody was divided between both Quartet (released in Australia as Performance) which instruments. starred Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken. Both Dimity and Julian have been “String quartet repertoire, by defi nition, generates intensity long-standing core members of the but it’s sometimes easy to dramatise 35 year old Australia Ensemble. differences in approach as confl ict. 2015 is shaping up as a year of Whereas the AE repertoire is anniversaries for them and two much more diverse and allows for other AE members, Dene Olding, more permutations,” Dimity said. co-concertmaster of the Sydney “Incidentally, we are always looking Symphony and his violist wife Irina for new or unexplored repertoire.” Morozova, who also happen to be Julian commented that initially the other half of the Goldner String potentially polarizing approaches Quartet. in string quartet repertoire – not One common element of both the necessarily along marital fault lines Dimity Hall Australia Ensemble and the Goldner either - are ultimately resolved into a Quartet is the extraordinary stability of their personnel. harmonious whole. The Goldners (named after Richard Goldner, the founder Who can blame them for wanting to of Musica Viva) are 20 years old and a national tour looms maintain an element of mystique? this year to celebrate both this milestone and Musica Viva’s 70th birthday.

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