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Lontano
Conductor: Odaline de la Martinez
Solo violinist: Caroline Balding
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Programme
SILVINA MILSTEIN
a thousand golden bells in the wind (premiere)
cristales y susurros
The Unending Rose II
Ochre, umber and burnt sienna (premiere)
Silvina Milstein
(b. 1956)
a thousand golden bells in the wind (premiere)
(2012)
for harp and two double basses
duration: 13'
A thousand golden bells in the breeze borrows its title from an image in Sudhana’s journey of spiritual realization as related in the last chapter of the Avatamsaka Sutra. Half way through his pilgrimage the youth seeks a female teacher. As Sudhana approaches her palace, he is engulfed by the sound of a myriad of golden bells as they rustle in the breeze. He finds her ‘draped with a radiant mesh made of all kinds of precious substances.’ Sudhana learns how some of her disciples have transcended passion and attained absorbing joy by just gazing at her. For others, talking to her has been a ‘gate’ to the essence of sound, while many have reached ultimately liberating knowledge and tranquillity by kissing and embracing her.
A thousand golden bells in the breeze consists of an introduction and two‘gates’ or sections. On entering each ‘gate’ we hear a phrase evoking the chiming of an ethereal carillon, which resurfaces at the very end of the work.
This work is a rethinking, in the manner of a Picasso series, of a homonymous piece for double-manual harpsichord premiered by Chau-Yee Lo at the Edinburgh Festival 2009.
Cristales y susurros
(2005)
for mixed septet
duration: 9' 30"
In cristales y susurros (crystal and whispers) evocative gestures and motives drawn from the vernacular of Buenos Aires continuously proliferate, echoing the ripples left by the pleasures and intimacy of a magical night as it is forgotten to later resurface as torn lace, shimmering silk and spilt champagne.
It is scored for a septet consisting of flute (doubling piccolo), clarinet (doubling bass clarinet), harp, and four strings. Cristales y susurros was written for Lontano and dedicated to Odaline de la Martinez.
The Unending Rose II
‘I am fire and air …’ (Shakespeare, Cleopatra, act V)
(1999)
for solo violin
duration: 9'30"
The Unending Rose consists of two pieces written for Darragh Morgan. The set takes it title from a poem by Jorge Luis Borges, in which the Sufi poet Attar of Nishapur addresses a rose in ‘words that had no sound, as one who thinks rather than one who prays'.
This evening we are going to hear the second piece of this set, which borrows its epigraph from the closing scenes of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. As the venom of the aspic precipitates her rapturous and defiant ending Cleopatra says she is 'fire and air'. According to Plutarch when Caesar’s men found the queen, she was ‘stark dead laid upon a bed of gold, attired and arrayed in her royal robes.’
The piece rapidly shifts from majestic sarabande-like gestures to moments of exuberance and intimacy, somehow attempting to echo the acting of Vanessa Redgrave as Cleopatra at the Riverside Studios in the nineties.
Ochre, umber and burnt sienna (premiere)
(2012)
for mixed septet
duration: 15'
Since prehistoric times men have used earth pigments for depicting their imaginings, but I am particularly attracted by Johannes Vermeer use of ochre, umber and burnt sienna in his paintings of women in their private spaces. After visiting the recent exhibition of Vermeer paintings at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, I became absorbed in a mode of looking at those portraits that involves focusing on how their expressive backgrounds saturated with tiny strokes of earth pigments invite us to enter domestic spaces, in which pensive women ponder and rest.
My piece is written for a septet consisting of flute, harp, three violins and two double basses. While the two double basses play in their highest register, one of the violins with its lowest string tuned a semitone lower than usual provides a bridge that binds the ensemble into a monochrome whole made of hues of earthy tones.
A friend, who attended the rehearsals for the recording of this piece by Lontano (to be released by LORELT in December), commented that each instrument seems to follow its own path on a shared journey, connected but not in conversation... [There is] a sense of pulse without one being palpable ... At varying rates characters develop and become foreground /background as if theatrical / operatic ... no individual propels the ‘procession’... the journey is eternal and inevitable.
Silvina Milstein was born in Buenos Aires in 1956 and emigrated to Britain after the Argentinian military coup of 1976. At Glasgow University her composition teachers were Judith Weir and Lyell Cresswell, and at Cambridge University she worked with Alexander Goehr. In the late eighties she held fellowships at Jesus College and King's College (Cambridge), and is currently a professor of music at King's College London.
Odaline de la Martinez : Artistic Director/conductor
One of the liveliest and most enterprising musical personalities on the British music scene, Cuban-born Odaline de la Martinez pursues a busy international career performing a great variety of repertoire ranging from Mozart symphonies to the latest of contemporary music.
Brought up and educated in the USA, she settled in London and studied at the Royal Academy of Music. It is over a decade since Odaline de la Martinez became the first woman to conduct a BBC Promenade concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Since then she has been invited back very regularly and in the summer of 1994 she conducted a rare performance of The Wreckers by Dame Ethel Smyth, later released on CD by Conifer Records. A CD recording of Dame Smyth's orchestral music for Chandos Records followed.
Martinez is founder and music director of the contemporary ensemble Lontano with whom she has performed and broadcast all over the world, of the London Chamber Symphony and, in 1990, the European Women's Orchestra. As well as frequent appearances as guest conductor with the leading orchestras throughout Great Britain, including all the BBC orchestras, she has conducted amongst others, the San Diego and New Zealand Symphony Orchestras, the Australian Youth Orchestra, the Natal Philharmonic, the Aarhus Symphony, the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, Radio-Television Orchestra of Brazil, the Kansas City Symphony the Orquesta Filarmonica de UNAM in Mexico City, the Orquestra do Algarve in Portugal, and the Vancouver Chamber Orchestra. She is also known as a broadcaster for BBC Radio and Television.
In 1992 she founded her own record label, LORELT, which concentrates on areas neglected by many recording companies.
Lontano
Since its foundation in 1976, Lontano has been recognised as one of Britain's most exciting and versatile exponents of twentieth and twenty-first century music. Lontano's internation reputation has taken them to Europe and both North and South America. Lontano regularly broadcasts on television and radio and enjoys a close relationship with the BBC.
Lontano commissions, produces, performs and records with the primary aim of bringing to the fore the work of contemporary living composers, women and Latin American composers. The ensemble's sphere of activity includes contemporary opera, music theatre, concerts, workshops, education projects, tours, broadcasts and recordings.
Lontano has been the contemporary music ensemble in residence at King's College London for the past two decades, contributing to the development and training of its undergraduate and postgraduate composers. Their inspiring workshops for the performance of undergraduate and postgraduate compositions have played a crucial formative role, forging connections that often continue to evolve outside the institutional boundaries. Lontano's forthcoming CD London Voices presents a cross-section of the work of five graduate composers about to reach the end of their training under the guidance of Silvina Milstein, as an acknowledgement and celebration of the extraordinary creativity, diversity and artistic commitment displayed by the many young composers that have converged at King's College London over recent years.
Lontano players performing tonight
Flute: Rowland Sutherland
Clarinets: Andrew Sparling
Harp: Sally Pryce
Violin: Caroline Balding
Ruth Ehrlich
Simon Kodurand
Viola: Kate Musker
Cello: Sophie Harris
Double Bass: Adam Wynter
Ben Daniel Greep
This concert is presented in partnership with Silvina's Inaugural Lecture - Musings and reminiscences on the mysteries of composing music: forewords and postscripts - which takes place earlier in the evening.
Image: The Vermeer – A Woman Asleep