NOVA Chamber Music Series
Fry Street Quartet, music directors
Libby Gardner Concert Hall
concert program
with notes by Jeff Counts
Tale of Lead and Light
Maja Ratkje
(b. 1973)
Karen Wyatt, Evgenia Zharzhavskaa violin
Brant Bayless viola | Pegsoon Whang cello
Andrew Mellor’s biographical sketch of Norwegian composer Maja Ratkje places her “own voice” at the center of her music, calling it a “constant tool for realigning her work with natural expressions and human truths.” He meant this both literally, as with her acclaimed explorations of novel vocal production techniques, and not. Ratkje’s highly personal “voice” can be heard also in her “ability to hold disparate materials in her grasp” with “care and restraint”, especially when confronting tough, important topics. Tale of Lead and Light was written in 2011 as a complement to Beethoven’s Op. 59 No. 1 String Quartet. “Beethoven’s scores for string quartet,” writes Ratkje in her program note, “[are] a cornucopia of techniques and musicality. They were certainly not meant for pure entertainment.” Beethoven’s status as “free artist” was important to Ratkje. As a free artist herself, Ratkje felt compelled to reflect some troubling recent realities in her home country. “When I was in the middle of writing this piece,” she wrote, “a bomb exploded in Oslo and a killer shot teenagers at an island summer camp.” As news reports repeatedly showed pictures from the terrible events, the recurring image of “lead-coloured skies” captured Ratkje’s attention. The title of Tale of Lead and Light is meant to evoke that dread, but also hope. “Beethoven’s light,” she concludes, “shines through, strong and full of life.”
Fear | Release
Ellen Reid
(b. 1983)
Keith Carrick, James Michael Sammons, Eric Hopkins, Michael Pape percussion
Composer and sound artist Ellen Reid does a bit of everything. From opera to film scoring to avant-pop to art installation projects, Reid has built a reputation as a genre-allergic innovator and a bright North Star for creators who don’t always get the attention they deserve. In collaboration with colleague Missy Mazzoli, Reid co-founded the Luna Composition Lab, a mentorship program for young female, non-binary, and gender non-conforming composers. In 2020, Reid created SOUNDWALK, a GPS-enabled public art piece that re-imagines city parks as interactive soundscapes with music by the New York Philharmonic, Kronos Quartet, and others. What began in Central Park has moved on to Los Angeles, London, and Tokyo…so far! About the 2017 percussion ensemble work Fear | Release, Reid writes: “Fear | Release is about reframing the familiar in a new light. The composition is built around a five-note phrase that is echoed and developed in both melodic and textural ways. To create a sense of hyper resonance and spatialization, no note is struck by itself; each hit is doubled by another player on a different but similar instrument.” The piece was commissioned by the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet and intended for surround sound recording.
Book of Mourning, Quarto III: Tala
Sidney Boquiren
(b. 1970)
Mitchell Giambalvo, Kimi Kawashima piano
Keith Carrick, Eric Hopkins percussion
“Tala,” according to composer Sidney Boquiren, “is a multivalent Tagalog word that, depending on pronunciation, can mean ‘star’, ‘count’, or ‘remembering’. The Book of Mourning, Quarto III: Tala (2018) is constructed in three sections to reflect these three possible meanings.” Boquiren was born in the Philippines and spent several years in Saudi Arabia, but he has lived most of his adult life in America. Catholicism, Filipino heritage, and global social justice are common themes in his music, much of which exploits the creative possibilities of interdisciplinary collaboration with dancers, actors, visual artists, and writers. The Book of Mourning, Quarto III: Tala is the “third in a set of four works that dwell on grieving and mourning as a shared human experience.” Specifically, Borquiren continues, “I wrote Tala as a response to the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that resulted in the death of 17 innocent victims and brought about the rise of youth-led activism against gun violence.” The main part of Tala is based on two conventions: “the names of three Parkland survivor-activists transformed into pitches and harmonies, and the number of victims of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in the United States since 2009 translated as durations.”
String Quintet in F major, op. 59 no. 1
Ludwig van Beethoven
(1770-1827)
I. Allegro
II. Allegretto vivace e sempre scherzando
III. Adagio molto e mesto
IV. Thème russe. Allegro
And now we come full circle, back to Beethoven and his String Quartet in F major. Count Andrei Kirillovich Razumovsky was a Russian nobleman of Ukrainian descent who worked for many years as a diplomat in Vienna. As a lover of the arts, it was only a matter of time before Razumovsky’s path crossed with Beethoven’s. That day arrived in 1806 with a commission for the Schuppanzigh Quartet, a Vienna-based ensemble that enjoyed Razumovsky’s continued financial support. Beethoven met the obligation with three quartets under the Opus 59 banner that, in their time, were considered difficult and “not easily intelligible.” The F Major Quartet in particular (as the first of the trilogy) got a very peculiar reaction from the musicians at the initial rehearsal. Not yet able to comprehend the scope of Beethoven’s intentions for the Opus 59 quartets as a collective utterance, the players reportedly burst into laughter during their reading of No. 1, certain that the Maestro was joking. When approached by one of the exasperated violinists, Beethoven replied that the music was “not for you, but for a later age.” It is hard to say if we have now arrived at the age Beethoven referred to, but if we are permitted to comprehend the “Razumovsky” Quartets simply as the soul-sustaining efforts of a composer facing his personal challenges with great courage, they need no explanation.
artists
Featured
our sponsors
Today’s concert has been made possible by
LAWRENCE T. & JANET T. DEE FOUNDATION
Our tribute to Barbara Scowcroft, NOVA Music Director from 1986-2004, is sponsored by
KATHRYN WADDELL
The Fremont String Quartet is supported by
HILLARY HAHN & JEFF COUNTS
Book of Mourning, Quatro III: Tala is supported by
THE AMPHION FOUNDATION
Tale of Lead and Light and Fear | Release are supported by
THE ALICE M. DITSON FUND
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