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Voices of Change comes alive like a jungle at sunrise
The music was really contemporary – none more than two years old – for Voices of Change’s Sunday-evening concert at Southern Methodist University’s Caruth Auditorium. On first hearing, none of the four works leapt out as deathless art. But later and wiser counsels may decide otherwise, and each offered listening pleasure.
The highest-profile name on the program was John Adams, whose Son of Chamber Symphony was getting only its second performance since its November 2007 premiere in San Francisco. But the piece that most grabbed my ears was the two-year-old Shu Shon Key (Remembrance) by Taiwan-born Shih-Hui Chen, who’s on the faculty of Rice University in Houston.
Dr. Chen’s piece, which exists in two versions, was given in an edition for solo viola and six other instrumentalists (winds, strings, piano and percussion). The dreamy opening suggests late Debussy with Asian accents, and more “advanced” harmonies. Then, over string pluckings, flute and clarinet weave long-breathed melodies, after which the whole ensemble comes alive, like a jungle at sunrise.
12:00 AM CST on Monday, March 3, 2008
By SCOTT CANTRELL / The Dallas Morning News
[email protected]
Steven Mackey’s “Ground Swell” grew out of a similar disconnect between ends and means, but the conflict worked itself out more fruitfully. Threads of Americana emerged now and then, but they were colored in unexpected ways. Exhilaration was the guiding force at times, while other passages seemed overcome by vertigo and fatigue.
The sophisticated orchestration certainly helped Mackey’s cause, as did the superb artistry of violist Hsin-Yun Huang. Her tone was rich and earthy, and she negotiated each phrase with remarkable agility and expressive acumen. After some early imbalances between soloist and ensemble, Burns and company settled into an impressively authoritative reading.
The most vivid memories of the piece were its risky, lopsided proportions. The opening movement (“Approach to Sea”) was cut brutally short just as its material began to take shape, while the finale (“Sailing Away”) was leisurely, loose and gently repetitive.
Chicago Tribune, March 20, 2008
]]>Shu Shon Key (Remembrance) was inspired by a Taiwanese Folk melody that conveys a feeling of homesickness. I wrote this work for Hsin-Yun Huang who shares a similar background to my own: both of us were born in Taiwan, yet we have lived the majority of our lives in the West. Given our shared heritage and experience, it seemed fitting to use this melody as source material for this work.
At the beginning of the piece, the original melody with its sad and bittersweet emotion is presented in a simplified manner. Gradually this melancholy emotion, carried by different fragments of the folk melody, is transformed into an uplifting, lighter, playful, and eventually intense, powerful music for the climax of the piece. After a dazzling cadenza-like passage that reveals Hsin-Yun’s superb musicianship and technique, the melody returns in its original, elaborated form played by the entire ensemble in a multi-layered texture. This brings full closure and a resolution to end the piece.
Shu Shon Key was commissioned by a consortium of organizations including Da Camera of Houston, Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts, Appalachian Summer Festival in North Carolina, and the Evergreen Symphony Orchestra in Taiwan. There are two versions of this piece; a concerto version and a chamber orchestra version.
– Shih-Hui Chen
]]>The governing metaphor for Groundswell is an imaginary journey through various topographies from sea level to Alpine terrain and back again. The viola functions as a guide, controlling the pace, highlighting points of interest, leading the group around tricky corners, stepping forward with acts of heroism, and standing aside to allow the group to experience their own personal awe.
There is an unavoidable symmetry in such an adventure. Even if you take a different route on the way down from the way up you pass through the same ecosystems in reverse order. This symmetry suggested the form of the piece. There are seven movements and the middle movement, Peak Experience, is singular and stands alone. The other six movements are all part of symmetrically placed pairs: 1. Approach by Sea – 7. Sailing Away; 2. The Fertile Sea – 6. Running Downhill; 3. Thin Air – 5. Over the Top. The degree of contrast becomes progressively greater as you descend so that, even though derived from the same material, movements one and seven, diverge quite a bit from one another while movements two and four are less divergent and movements three and five are very similar.
My first thoughts about Groundswell were while hiking in the mountains near Aspen in the summer of 2006. The steep uphill climb in the oxygen poor altitude informed Thin Air, the third movement – it’s full of expectation and a bit giddy. The stubborn beauty of the rocky landscape above the tree line suggested the austere, suspended fourth movement – Peak Experience. The adventure got me thinking about how the earth and our relationship to it changes at different altitudes.
My mind wanders easily to the mountains. I went to high school in South Lake Tahoe CA and was a professional freestyle skier back in the days of hot-dogging. Much if not most of my music is influenced by the rhythms of sliding down mountains but this is the first time I’ve consciously explored images from the earth that remains when the snow melts.
There were more meditations about earth and altitude later that same summer, while I was on my honeymoon in Italy. The first movement, Approach by Sea, is a short prelude that tries to capture the rush of bouncing along modest sea swells in our rented boat heading toward Monte Argentario, a rocky mountain that rises without warning out of the Mediterranean on the Tuscan coastline.
Driving around in our scooter (also rented) allowed us to appreciate the inland panoramas – repetitive patterns of cypress trees leading up to vineyards and olive groves nestled below medieval villages perched strategically on the hilltops. The second movement, The Fertile Hillside, is inspired equally by that landscape and the tuneful contours and dancing, undulating rhythms of spoken Italian.
Groundswell was written for my friend Hsin-Yun Huang whose sound is deep, warm and earthy and whose virtuosity and musicianship casts her comfortably into the role of guide.
Groundswell has a duration of about 23 minutes and is written for solo Viola, Oboe, Clarinet, Bass Clarinet, Horn, Violin 1, Violin 2, Viola, Cello, Piano.
-Steven Mackey
]]>Six Short Pieces for Viola and Piano
1. Portal
2. Even Song
3. Rhapsody
4. Ballad
5. Dirge
6. Duet
Commissioned by Hsin-Yun Huang and Da Camera of Houston
According to tradition, a mid-or late 19th century instrumental Romance — or Romanza is a shortish composition of predominantly melodic nature, with a slight leaning toward the sentimental.
In several European languages, such as German, French — and Danish — the word for novel, i.e. an unfolding drama in writing, is roman, and although there is nothing literary about my six Romances, each piece tells its own story open to individual inner interpretation.
No. 1 PORTAL forms the opening chapter, so to speak, paving the way fort the second movement, named EVEN SONG; maybe it is just a simple tune heard at sunset, and who knows, perhaps the melody is carried from far away, over the hills from inside the village church….
Titles such as RHAPSODY, BALLAD and DIRGE (song of mourning) immediately reveal the nature and mood of the music to come, whereas the concluding piece DUET is slightly more “mysterious”… in a classic duet two instruments in question, (or more likely: voices) complement each other benevolently. In the present case, however, the viola and the piano both stand firm, protecting their own turf — and: “the twain shall never meet!”
The piece is vert short indeed, it just stops, leaving the listener to finish the “story” in his or her own imagination. A true open ending.
Poul Ruders
September 2011
– Boston Globe
]]>– Der Tagesspiegel
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