Program Notes
- Winter Concert
"Across the Pond"
-
Women and
Fairies [World Premiere] (Nimrod
Borenstein)
-
Eclogue, Op. 10
(Gerald Finzi)
-
Norfolk
Rhapsody No. 1 (Ralph Vaughan Williams)
-
Molly on the
Shore (Percy Grainger)
Irish Tune from County Derry
-
St. Paul's
Suite, Op. 29, No. 2 (Gustav Holst)
-
Tam o'Shanter
Overture (Malcolm Arnold)
Women and Fairies (2006) [World Premiere]
Nimrod Borenstein (b. 1969)
Nimrod Borenstein holds postgraduate diplomas from the Royal College of Music
and the Royal Academy of Music where he was a Leverhulme Trust Fellow and is now
listed amongst the alumni as an illustrious past student. He is a Laureate of
the Cziffra Foundation of France and has just been appointed composer in
residence of the YMC (London, UK). Legendary pianist and conductor Vladimir
Ashkenazy recently heard Nimrod's music for the first time and has given him his
full support.
Borenstein has won several international composition competitions and his
works are gaining a worldwide reputation with performances throughout Europe,
Canada, Australia and the U.S.A. His latest works for orchestra are receiving
exceptionally enthusiastic reviews from the press and becoming part of the
repertoire of many orchestras. The Shell Adagio was performed over 30 times by
16 different orchestras during the last season and is now published by Boosey
& Hawkes New-York.
Mr. Borenstein's success is also demonstrated by the fact the he has over a
dozen world premieres and commissions scheduled for 2007-2008. Mr. Borenstein's
publishers include Boosey & Hawkes (New York), Fatrock Ink (Los Angeles) and
Alain Van Kerckhoven Éditeur (Belgium).
"Women and Fairies was written in 2006. Today you are present at its
world premiere performance. The piece was first thought of as a first movement
for a ballet in five parts. In 1998, Laurent Cavana, a dancer with the Rambert
Dance Company, suggested that my music would work well with the modern ballet. I
came to see many dance productions and was excited by the idea of such a project
but was unfortunately too busy at the time to be in a position to write such a
long piece. The first two movements were half written and were left for many
years to rest. It is during the last year, a year devoted to writing orchestral
music, that I finally looked back and felt ready to finish writing Women and
Fairies as a single movement orchestral piece. The piece had always been one of
my favourites even in its previous "potential" piece status. The
second piece of the set mentioned was also finished (The Storm Op. 28b) and
maybe one day I will write the 3 missing links...
Women and Fairies conjures many images, is often magical and singing but also
contains brilliant fast passages." [Nimrod Borenstein]
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Eclogue, Op. 10 (1929)
Gerald Finzi (1901-1956)
Finzi was born in London and spent most of his life living and working there.
He was acquainted with Vaughan Williams (who conducted the premiere of Finzi's
Violin Concerto in 1928) and Holst, among others. He founded the Newbury String
Players, initially local amateurs, and conducted them until his death. The group
revived neglected eighteenth-century string music and introduced music of
Finzi's contemporaries.
The Eclogue, for piano and strings, was meant to be the second movement of an
unfinished piano concerto. It is in a pastoral mood, utilizing the contrapuntal
style of Bach (reflecting Finzi's interest in music from the
eighteenth-century), yet retaining Finzi's often-used technique of building to a
strong climax and then subsiding.
In 1951, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease and given five to ten years
to live. [CJ]
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Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1 (1905-06, rev. 1914)
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Ralph (pronounced "Rayf") Vaughan Williams discovered English folk
song as a musical source of inspiration around 1905 and incorporated it in many
of his compositions from then on. He is a central figure in British music as
much for his lengthy career as a teacher, lecturer, and champion of younger
composers and conductors as for his own impact as a composer and conductor. [CJ]
"Vaughan Williams composed this work in 1905 and 1906 but revised it
considerably in 1914. Sir Henry Wood introduced the original version in Queen's
Hall, London, on August 23, 1906. Vaughan Williams was already past 30 when he
found -- in English folk music first, then in early hymnody -- the keys to a
personal style that served him nobly over several periods for the next half
century. He was still composing when, just short of his 87th birthday, death
reprieved him from the attrition of aging. No major composer of any nationality
started later; few matched his perseverance or durability; even fewer felt the
need -- not even the beleaguered Bruckner -- to revise as much or as often. As
late as 1951, his 80th year, Vaughan Williams made new editions of Symphonies
One through Six (No. 7, the Antarctic, was in progress, and the Eighth and Ninth
were as yet unborn).
Four short works for orchestra preceded the first Norfolk Rhapsody, but the
composer published only one of these -- In the Fen Country of 1904 (albeit in a
1935 revision). Actually, there were three Norfolk Rhapsodies, but Vaughan
Williams withdrew Nos. 2 and 3 after conducting them at Cardiff in 1907. The
lone survivor is considered the composer's first "official" folk song
work, for it followed a January 1905 collecting expedition "in the King's
Lynn neighbourhood," according to Hugh Ross' 1950 study of the composer for
Oxford University Press.
Three of his discoveries at fishing villages in fog-shrouded Norfolk, north
of London, are quoted in this E minor rhapsody, which Hugh Ottaway characterizes
in the New Grove Twentieth-Century English Masters as having "a distinctive
tone poetry, atmospheric and pure in expression, that points clearly to the next
period [1909-1914]."
Ross further described the work as follows: "the adagio opening is as
tenuous as a misty dawn, and there is a suggestion of the chilly vapours
fluttered by a breeze from the [North] Sea. The viola sings to us 'The Captain's
Apprentice' -- one of the noblest and possibly the most directly tragic of
English folk-songs....'A bold young sailor courted me' rather shyly intrudes,
and then 'On board on a '98' [identified by the composer's widow Ursula as
"a type of warship, designated by the number of guns she
carried"]....The ending section never rises above piano, and closes in the
sea mist of the beginning...a deeply considered work...a moving piece of music
which inspires and retains affection as well as admiration." The quiet
ending of the revised version was the first of a series of poetic sonic
"dissolves" that would become a trademark of the composer's
music." [from notes at http://malicioususer.thalysman.com/trax/Export%20Malicious/details/73683.html]
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Molly on the Shore (1914)
Irish Tune from County Derry (1913)
[arr. Otto Langey] Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882-1961)
"Born in Brighton, Melbourne, Australia, on July 8, 1882, Grainger spent
his childhood in his native city, where he was educated by his mother and
studied piano with Louis Pabst. He attended the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt
am Main from 18 95 until 1899… He settled in London in 1901 and began to
establish his career as a concert pianist. Starting in April 1905, he noted his
first folk songs in Brigg, Lincolnshire.
"By 1905, Grainger was performing his own music in concert, but, it was
not until a 1912 concert presented in London's Aeolian Hall devoted entirely to
his works that he truly established his reputation as a composer--the first
Australian to do so. In 1914 he moved to New York, spending two years in the
U.S. Army Band nearby from 1917 to 1919 (playing oboe and saxophone). He
acquired U. S. citizenship in 1918. In 1921 he settled into his White Plains,
New York, home, which would remain his primary address for the remainder of his
life.
"As chairman of the music department at New York University during the
brief period of 1932-1933, he was instrumental in bringing Duke Ellington's
uptown Cotton Club jazz band to the downtown campus--a first for that
institution of higher learning at a time when jazz and, especially Ellington's
special brand of it, were not widely accepted by the academic community.
"During the final years of his life, he finalized his concepts of
`elastic scoring': a technique of scoring in a manner whereby any number of
players--from as few as two or three to an orchestra of 100--can play the same
work without distortion of the basic content. Percy Grainger died in White
Plains on February 20, 1961, leaving the world a rich legacy of work which has
only been properly assessed during recent years."-from notes by Dana Perna,
edited by CJ.
Grainger typically collected folk songs and arranged them for piano. He would
then score them for various instrumental and vocal combinations. I have included
his notations below. [CJ]
Molly on the Shore:
"Birthday-gift, Mother, 3.7 '07. Irish Reel for piano based on two Cork
Reel tunes, 'Temple hill' and 'Molly on the shore', respectively Nos. 901 and
902 of The Complete Petrie Collection of Ancient Irish Music edited by Sir
Charles Villiers Stanford (Boosey & Co., London)."
Irish Tune from County Derry:
"The tune was collected by Miss J. [Jane] Ross, of New Town, Limavady
Co. Derry (Ireland) and printed in The Petrie Collection of the Ancient Music of
Ireland (Dublin, 1855) on page 57 of which collection the following remarks by
George Petrie go before the tune, which is headed: 'Name unknown':
For the following beautiful air I have to express my very grateful
acknowledgement to Miss J. Ross, of New Town, Limavady, in the County of
Londonderry--a lady who has made a large collection of the popular unpublished
melodies of the county, which she has very kindly placed at my disposal, and
which has added very considerably to the stock of tunes which I had previously
acquired from that still very Irish county. I say still very Irish, for though
it has been planted for more than two centuries by English and Scottish
settlers, the old Irish race still forms the great majority of its peasant
inhabitants; and there are few, if any counties in which, with less foreign
admixture, the ancient melodies of the country have been so extensively
preserved. The name of the tune unfortunately was not ascertained by Miss Ross,
who sent it to me with the simple remark that it was 'very old', in the
correctness of which statement I have no hesitation in expressing my perfect
concurrence."
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St. Paul's Suite, Op. 29, No. 2 (1912)
I. Jig
II. Ostinato
III. Dance [Intermezzo]
IV. Finale (The Dargason)
Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
Holst met Vaughan Williams in 1895. This meeting developed into a lifelong
friendship. Known best for his composition The Planets, Holst, as did his
friend, came to find inspiration in folk songs. Holst taught at St. Paul's Girls
School from 1905 until his death in 1934; we will play two suites written for
their orchestra.
"The 'Brook Green Suite' was composed in 1933 and given an informal
first performance in March of 1934 by the school orchestra. Holst died two
months later. This suite shows none of the frustration, pain; and worry that
afflicted the composer during his final days. Like the "St. Paul's Suite:
it is bathed in the bright light of C Major, and juxtaposes placid melodies with
energetic jigs. The short opening prelude repeats a rich, descending C Major
scale with a modal sounding melody above it. The Air is of a slightly darker
hue, its material closely related to Welsh folk song. The final Dance is again a
jig; its melody was supposedly overheard by Holst while at a puppet show in
Sicily." [Philip Kennicott]
In 1913, the school opened a new music wing. Holst wrote the St. Paul's Suite
for the occasion. It is usually performed in its original string version, but
the following note appears on the cover of the manuscript score:
"This Suite was written for St. Paul's Girls' school orchestra in 1912.
By the time it was finished and copied the orchestra possessed wood wind
instruments. Parts for the latter were added. Gustav Holst July 1922"
We will perform this later version, which includes some extended movements
and scoring variants, making it significantly different from the string
orchestra version.
"The Suite opens with a forceful, almost raucous jig in C Major which
alternates a tripping dance figure in 6/8 with a heavier, more assertive
response in 9/8. The Ostinato movement begins with a whispering, muted ostinato
figure in 2/4, which continues its three tone perpetual motion oblivious to the
harmonic explorations in a different meter happening all around it. The
Intermezzo [Dance] juxtaposes two exotic gestures, one a passionate violin line
supposedly based on a theme Holst noted down while traveling in Algeria, the
other an energetic but short lived vivace. Both themes appear elsewhere in
Holst's work, the former from his earlier Oriental Sutie Beni Mora (1910) and
the latter in his ballet music for The Perfect Fool (1918-1922).; The finale is
based on two of the most beloved and recognized tunes of all time, the
sprightly, jigging "Dargosan" [sic] and the haunting "Greensleeves."
This skillful and exciting interweaving of melodies was originally composed as
the finale for Holst's Second Suite for Military Band (1911); it was transcribed
for string orchestra to complete this bright, exuberant score which Imogen
called one of her father's "happiest works."
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Tam o'Shanter Overture (1955)
Malcolm Arnold (1921- 2006)
Robert Burns, the great Scottish poet, wrote on of his best narrative poems,
based on the tale of Tam o'Shanter, in 1790. A synopsis of the story, as
presented in the Burns poem, may be outlined as follows:
Tam sits in a pub in Ayr, Scotland, drinking with his friends. His wife
predicts that he will be found drowned in the Doon River or caught be warlocks.
The wife, Kate, is portrayed as an authority to be feared.
Tam continues to drink, and even flirts with the landlady of the pub.
Eventually, he mounts up and rides off on his grey mare Meg, for his long, dark,
lonely ride home. Burns emphasises the spooky character of the Ayrshire
countryside Tam has to ride through - but of course it is much easier as he is
drunk.
With the scene set, suddenly: "wow! Tam saw an unco sight!"
The sight he sees is Alloway Kirk, ablaze with light, where a weird
hallucinatory dance involving witches and warlocks, open coffins, and even the
Devil himself is in full swing. The scene is told with grimly enthusiastic
gothic attention to detail. Tam manages to watch silently, until, the dancing
witches having cast off most of their clothes. He is beguiled by one
particularly comely female witch, Nannie, whose shirt (cutty-sark) is too small
for her. He cannot help shouting out in passion. There is a chase and Tam's
evident pride in the ability of his horse is justified, as she is able to help
him to "win the key-stone o' the brig." (Witches and warlocks cannot
cross running water.)
They only just make it though, as Nannie, first among the "hellish
legion"chasing, grabs the horse's tail, which comes off. In fine
tongue-in-cheek (or is it?) moralistic mode, the poem concludes:
" Now, wha this tale o' truth shall read, Ilk man and mother's son, take
heed: Whene'er to Drink you are inclin'd, Or Cutty-sarks rin in your mind, Think
ye may buy the joys o'er dear; Remember Tam o' Shanter's mare."
Malcolm Arnold, generally considered one of the best British composers of the
twentieth century, has depicted the poem musically. Arnold has a vast amount of
music to his credit, including an Academy Award for the score to The Bridge on
the River Kwai (1957). Arnold captures the Scottish locale with his music,
including folk-like tunes and an imitation of bagpipes. We hear Tam drunk,
riding through the woods, observing the "unco sight," and barely
escaping capture. There is even humor in the brief, contrite epilogue followed
by a sudden, strong closing chord.
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