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Sunday, 23 October, Kolarac Hall, 20.00
ST. GEORGE STRINGS
Robert McDuffie, violin
Marija Špengler, violin
Lekeu: Adagio for Strings
Glass: Violin Concerto No. 2 – The American Four Seasons (Serbian premiere)
Piazzola: Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, for violin and strings
Ticket prices: 800, 1.400, 2.000 din.
Program
Guillaume Lekeu (1870-1894)
ADAGIO for string trio and string orchestra (1891) 12’30’’
Philip Glass (1937)
VIOLIN CONCERTO No. 2 FOUR AMERICAN SEASONS, for violin, strings and synthesizer (2009) - Serbian premiere 27’
Neda Hofman, synthesizer
Intermission
Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) / Leonid Desyatnikov (1955)
FOUR SEASONS OF BUENOS AIRES (1964-70) 25’30’’
Guillaume Lekeu, a composer from Belgium whose life ended abruptly at a young age, was a student of César Franck and later of Vincent d’Indy. His small creative opus is known for the Sonata for violin and piano, commissioned and performed worldwide by the famous violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, and also for the thrilling Adagio pour Quatuor d'Orchestre, scored for three soloists and string ensemble. Franck’s influence is clearly visible in a dense polyphonic structure of the piece, and also in its typically romantic sensitivity.
Another concerto by Philip Glass featured on the programme of the 43rd Bemus, the Violin Concerto No. 2 “Four American Seasons“ was composed for Robert McDuffie in the Summer and Autumn of 2009. According to the composer, ‘The work was preceded by several years of occasional exchanges between Bobby [McDuffie] and myself. He was interested in music that would serve as a companion piece to the Vivaldi “Four Seasons” concertos. I agreed to the idea of a four-movement work but at the outset was not sure how that correspondence would work in practice - between the Vivaldi concertos and my own music. However, Bobby encouraged me to start with my composition...’
The Concerto consists of eight sections: a Prologue, four Movements and three Songs. Since Glass and McDuffie had somewhat different opinion about the order of the sections, the composer decided that the order should stay indetermined. Thus, there are no instructions for the audience, ‘no clues as to where Spring, Summer, Winter, and Fall might appear in the new concerto’. There are 24 mathematical possibilities, or permutations, of the puzzle. Apart from that, instead of the usual cadenza, Glass provided a number of solo pieces “for Bobby” - thinking that they could be played together as separate concert music when abstracted from the whole work. They appear in the concerto as a “prelude” to the first movement and three “songs” that precede each of the following three movements.
The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas) are a set of four tango compositions written by Astor Piazzolla, the father of the “Tango Nuevo”, between 1964 and 1970. The four pieces were originally conceived and treated as different compositions rather than one suite, although he performed them together with his quintet - since all “four seasons” were scored for a folk ensemble consisting of violin, electric guitar, piano, double bass and Piazzolla’s own instrument - bandoneon. As well as many other Piazzolla’s compositions, all four pieces exist in several versions for various ensembles. However, it is in the late 1990-ies thanks to the arrangements made by a Russian conductor and composer Leonid Desyatnikov, that the link between Piazzolla and Antonio Vivaldi, the composer of the original “Four Seasons”, becomes obvious. Namely Desyatnikov arranged the pieces for solo violin and string ensemble, adding a new dimension of virtuosity, and he also incorporated the quotations of Vivaldi’s own concertos. When it is winter in Italy, Vivaldi’s homeland, it is summer in Argentine, Piazzolla’s homeland; hence Desyatnikov makes a brilliant musical “joke”: he takes excerpts from Vivaldi’s winter and incorporates them in Piazzolla’s Summer - and vice versa!
Unlike Vivaldi’s concertos which consist of three movements, Piazzolla’s pieces are composed in one movement, but they contain several contrasting sections. The best features of Piazzolla’s style - exciting rhythms, expressive use of dissonances and abrupt shifts in tempo and meter - are retained in the version of Desyatnikov.
Jelena Janković
Grammy nominated artist Robert McDuffie has appeared as soloist with most of the major orchestras of the world, including the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, the Chicago, San Francisco, National, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, St. Louis, Montreal, and Toronto Symphonies, the Philadelphia, Cleveland, Minnesota Orchestras, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the North German Radio Orchestra, the Düsseldorf Symphony, the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Hamburg Symphony, Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala, Santa Cecilia Orchestra of Rome, etc.
His recent appearances abroad have been at the Royal Festival Hall in London with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Philharmonie in Cologne, the Seoul Arts Center in Korea, the National Concert Hall in Taipei, the Tonhalle Düsseldorf and at the Musikhalle in Hamburg.
In December 2009, he gave the World Premiere of Philip Glass’ Violin Concerto No. 2, The American Four Seasons with the Toronto Symphony - a work which was written for Robert McDuffie. During the 2010- 2011 season, McDuffie completed a 30-city U.S. tour with the Venice Baroque Orchestra, pairing the Glass Four Seasons with the Vivaldi Four Seasons. He performed the same program this June with the Zürich Chamber Orchestra at the Zürich Tonhalle and with the Prague Philharmonia at the Prague Spring Festival.
Robert McDuffie recorded The American Four Seasons with the London Philharmonic and Marin Alsop.
Future plans include tour of Holland and Belgium with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta and performance of the Barber Concerto with the Bruckner Orchestra Linz in Austria.
Robert McDuffie is the founder of the Rome Chamber Music Festival.
He plays a 1735 Guarneri del Gesu violin, known as the "Ladenburg". |
