ECCO featuring the Sturm und Klang Ensemble Brussels, 24th February 2015 PROGRAMME The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. THE EUROPEAN CONTEMPORARY COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA (ECCO) ECCO is an ECSA project which aims to establish itself as a pan-European “body of sound” dedicated to performance, circulation and promotion of contemporary art music as well as gaining new audience. In practice, it is a network of active ensembles, orchestras and young professionals, supporting creative dialogue among composers and performers and offering young professionals the opportunity to develop their skills with ensembles experienced in contemporary performing practices on an international level. By its educational dimension ECCO serves as a pro- active development and networking arena for professional composers and performers, especially young and emerging ones. It also aspires to combine music with different forms of artistic expressions and techniques, e.g. electronics, multimedia or crossover art performance. ECSA is very pleased that the Sturm und Klang Ensemble from Brussels was selected to serve as a core of ECCO for this year’s edition of the Creators Conference. The passionate ensemble’s name, Sturm und Klang, is a contemporary response to the Sturm & Drang ideal. The ensemble shares an appetite and a strong commitment to projects that claim dynamism, sensitivity and creativity and highly values energy, fire and enthusiasm. It will be conducted by its artistic director, Thomas van Haeperen. About European Composer & Songwriter Alliance (ECSA) ECSA is the European Composer and Songwriter Alliance representing over 23,000 professional composers and songwriters in 23 European countries. With 45 member organizations across Europe, the Alliance speaks for the interests of music writers of art & classical music (contemporary), film & audiovisual music as well as popular music. ECSA’s mission is to promote the rights of music writers at European and international level and to advocate for fair conditions for them. 3 PROGRAMME 1. MIHAILO TRANDAFILOVSKI (page 14) Diptych for solo violin and string orchestra - 16’’ with Peter Sheppard Skærved (page 16) 2. MATE BALOGH Luca Marenzio in Salzburg - 4’30 (page 6) 3. LYNNE PLOWMAN (page 12) The Stargazer - 20’’ with Michael Bennett (page 17) 4. PERTTI JALAVA (page 10) Pinta – Fantasy for String Orchestra n°2 - 9’’ 5. JEAN-LUC FAFCHAMPS Ainsi une courbe…- 14’’ with Claire Bourdet (page 8 and 18) FEATURING THE STURM UND KLANG ENSEMBLE Conducted by Thomas Van Haeperen (page 20) 4 INTRODUCTION AND COMMENTS BY LEON STEFANIJA As from a tree of differences and yet ... Musicologists usually try to comprehend a piece in its multiple facets – a listenet simply enyos if piece to apprehends her or him. Sometimes is rather elusive joi de vivre that catches someone's attention with music: usually some telling feature of the piece. And the following pieces have at least one thing in common. Their authors, even though from different cultural milieus, excell in the imaginative reflectivity regarding their experiential apprehension with some ideas that lay behind ther works. Moreover, they excell in a personally indulged and professionally crafted musical texts. Each composition has neat creative impulse : a diction (Máté Balogh), a curve (Jean-Luc Fafchamps), a dance and a song (Mihail Trandafilovski), a surface (Perti Jalava), and the stars (Lynne Plowman). Regardless of the semantic potentials of the individual piece, the music chosen for this concert exictingly indicates the compositional scope of today's creativity – each composer in her/his own terms. Besides, the superb performers will certainly bring the best out of the chosen compositions. Leon Stefanija is a Slovenian Musicologist and Professor at the University of Ljubljana, Department of Musicology 5 THE COMPOSERS MATE BALOGH Luca Marenzio in Salzburg Máté BALOGH was born in Győr, Hungary, in 1990. Graduated of the Conservatory of Pécs, where he specialized in the theory of music and composition with István Győrffy, he finished his studies in composition at the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest under Zoltán Jeney. Currently he is working on his doctoral degree and besides he is a professor-assistant in composition at the Liszt Academy. In 2013, he spent a semester in Trieste, Italy, studied composition with Fabio Nieder. He has participated in masterclasses with Péter Eötvös, Christian Wolff, Louis Andriessen, Petr Kotík, Gyula Csapó and Larry Polansky. His pieces have been performed in Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland and the United States. He won the 1st Prize of the composer competition of the Liszt Academy in 2011. He also won the 1st Prize of the competition of the Hungarian National Choir with a piece called ’The Four Parts of the Year’. In 2013, he won the 3rd Prize of the UMZF Composer Competition. As a musician, he sings baritone in the Capella Silentium chamber choir. He is also the member of the Hungarian Soundpainting Orchestra. « This piece was written after an extraordinary musical experience in the Salzburger Dom [2012] where a motet by Luca Marenzio (Super flumina Babylonis) was performed by the great hungarian choir 'Capella Silentium'. The piece contains three, four-parts choirs, which have to be placed separately in the space. At that inspired moment occured to me the idea of a piece for three string quartets. The form and the musical declamation of the piece is borrowed from Marenzio.» credit: Mate Balogh 6 A comment: Music and words, although commonly inseparable partners, do not fit easily into each other. They are sometimes »uneasy lovers« – the nature of the natural language is rather different from the nature of the musical instruments. And yet the 20th century has brought about a plethora of approaches themayizing the natural language in music: from the concept of intonation (as for instance in Leoš Janáček) to the Sprachkomposition and different the electro-acoustic experiments. The Balogh's piece may be seen as a nice hommage to the idea of merging one language into another in a form of structurally well defined and acribically developed gestures that may be compared to those in Marenzio's music. JEAN LUC FAFCHAMPS Ainsi une courbe Jean-Luc FAFCHAMPS (1960) is a pianist and composer. He studied at the Conservatoire de Mons and at Louvain-la-Neuve University. As founding member of the Ictus Ensemble, he took part in many concert performances in large ensembles or chamber groups and in mixed performances, particularly accompanying dance and theatre. He made recordings for Sub Rosa of works by Bowles, Liszt, Feldman, Dallapiccola, Duchamp, Scelsi and Berio and contributed to numerous recordings with the Ictus Ensemble and several singers. His compositions were hailed by the UNESCO International Rostrum of Young Composers (Attrition for string octet) and won him the Octave des Musiques Classiques 2006. The Ictus Ensemble, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Musiques Nouvelles, the Danel quartet, the National Orchestra of Lille, Liège Philharmonic Orchestra, TM+, Gageego and many more performed his work. It has been on the programme of many international festivals like Ars Musica (Brussels), Présences (Paris), Vilnius, Biennial of Venice, Warsaw, Lima, Budapest, etc.. He is currently developing several long-term projects in which his sense of synthesis is blossoming into mutually referential pieces. Among those, a vast network of cycles – the Lettres Soufies – has occupied him for fifteen years. He also teaches musical analysis at the Conservatoire de Mons. 7 Comment une courbe... (1996) was premiered on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the disappearance of the famous Belgian violinist Arthur Grumiaux. I was very admiring of his at the : same time sober and intense playing, of his perfectly mastered performances and of the crystal clear purity of its tone. I thus have written a crystal clear and sober piece, a kind of cantilena of rhapsodic appearance for violin and chamber Franc : Isabelle orchestra. Behind this aura of big nature, we can find two a little bit technical axes of concern: at Credit first, this composition is completely written around an interval of tierce (and of the complementary sixth), which resounds in network both in the field of the melody and of the harmony, and until the shape itself. Besides, this composition with its obviously expressive aspect opened my experiments as regards the deliberated recourse to the melody: still fairly motivic here, it explores a construction of insatiable, sinuous trend, voluntarily unpredictable, which prefigures the singings in the phraseology more voluntarily freed in Chant magnétique, Ghain or Waw, for example. It is moreover this characteristic which gives it its title... Comment une courbe... was commissioned by the Foundation Arthur Grumiaux, with the support of the Ministry of French Community, Belgium - department of Classical Music. A comment. The ideals of a limpid and sober musical narrative that cherishes expressive, expressionistically detailed, rather free phraseology of a magnetic chant is beautifully unfolded as a clear, solo musical statement right at the beginning : 8 (…) It is a refined musical statement that captures with its gestural flow: a set of phrases, expanding