Mese: Agosto 2015

Nordheim’s music is meant to be very playful. His Flashing, originally the cadenza of his concerto for accordion and orchestra (Spur), became eventually his most famous work for accordion. The whole composition is based on a very frisky idea: the bouncing of a little ball. Nordheim discovered the stereophonic character of the accordion, from whose sound of the left and the right hand comes from different channels. This stereo sound capacity gave Nordheim the perfect opportunity to create the illusion of a bouncing ball.

A very important page of the contemporary accordion literature, “Vagabonde blu” is a mirror of the aesthetics of the famous Italian composer: research of the noise brought to an extreme sensitiveness, dynamics rarely louder than a “piano”. It shows the physicality of the accordion as an instrument that breath like a lung, sighs and blow in the hands of the musician. “Vagabonde blu” are rare stars which appearance is different than the stellar evolution theory expects, maybe been originated by a collision between two stars.

One of the most spectacular pages written by the Russian composer, characterized by a repetitive stamping bitonal chords combination, which Stravinsky considered the focal point of the entire work. The rhythm of the stamping is disturbed by Stravinsky’s constant shifting of the accent, on and off the beat, before the dance ends in a collapse, as if from exhaustion.

Synopsis:

In 1943, 48 Japanese Prisoners of War were killed in Featherston, New Zealand, after an incident from cross-cultural confusion and miscommunication. All events surrounding the incident were kept secret until well after the war had finished: the Prisoner-of-War camp’s existence was hidden from the New Zealand public, and the official military report on the incident was riddled with ambiguities.

The incident itself involved lining up 240 protesting prisoners in a relative small area within the camp, after a sit-in. Some nervous moments ensued, in wich prison huards allegedly suspected an inclement mutiny. The guards then opened fire, killing 48 Japanese, and injuring more – including 6 New Zealanders who were hit by wayward bullets.

Cast:

Guards: Donaldson-Baritone; Malcom-Tenor; Guard-Bass; Men’s chorus;

Prisoners: Adachi-Tenor; Men’s chorus

Lawyer-Countertenor

Instrumentation:

Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, Percussion, Accordion, Violin, Viola, Cello

The Messe de Nostre Dame, a polyphonic four voices mass, is one of the greatest masterpieces of medieval music. The Kyrie is built around a famous melody (a –so called- cantus firmus) of the tenth-century with title Cunctipotens genitor.

Bent Sørensen, one of the most frequently performed contemporary Scandinavian composers, has taken the title, ‘Looking on Darkness’, from Shakespeare’s Sonnet No 27.

The thematic and intellectually clearly constructed form in which the inherent emotion is centrally placed, and which characterizes the sonnet, also forms the basis of Sørensen’s composition.

After a long day’s work the speaker of the sonnet from which the title of the work is taken lies looking out into the darkness; the memory of his beloved appears on his retina like a jewel in the night, but at the same time the sleepless one is restless at seeing the much missed beloved so clearly, and, just as in Shakespeare’s sonnet, the past, memory, arises in Sørensen’s music as it were out of nothing, out of the darkness, the silence; the concrete rattle of the accordion buttons and the sensitive dripping notes in the opening section vibrate on the borderline between the concrete and the hereafter.

Loss and mourning for that which is lost and will never come again, flow into the fleeting and poetic tones and meld together; the music oscillates, lingers, holds tightly to the absence, slackens its grip, tries again, does not say: hear me, but moves carefully onwards with itself like the fragmentary memories in Samuel Beckett’s late prose, before the sorrowful voice of the piece, just as beautiful and unobtrusive, withdraws again and leaves us to the silence, to what used to be.

Erland Kiøsterud

The title literally means “Apparition of Franz Schubert between the waves”. It’s a poetical and evocative piece. The accordions create an acoustic landscape from which short distant delicate glimpses of melodies timidly emerge until the final, an homage to the great Austrian composer.

Listen on Youtube