WNMF 2: Raiskin Conducts Rouse & Gourzi

The second orchestral concert of this year’s festival features two works that both, in their way, grapple with the connection between worlds.

Opening the program, we welcome Greek composer Konstantia Gourzi and trumpet soloist Simon Höfele to Winnipeg, collaborating on Ypsilon for trumpet and orchestra.

Symphony No. 6 was the last completed work by the great American composer Christopher Rouse before his death in 2019. Part of a set of works he referred to as his “Death Cycle”, he composed this final symphony as an epitaph to himself. A powerful and introspective work, Rouse chose not to share the personal meaning he conceived for it, instead inviting the audience to absorb and interpret its mysteries each on our own terms.

BUY WNMF Pass

PROGRAM NOTES

Konstantia Gourzi – Ypsilon, A Poem for Trumpet and Orchestra in Five Scenes (2020)

Simon Höfele, trumpet

The title “Ypsilon” is inspired by the Greek letter Y, which has several meanings. The most striking is the letter itself, which can also be seen as a person with arms stretched upwards. The translation of the word “Ypsilon” from Greek means “the High”, but also “to look at the High”.

The symbol Y has a strong effect on me and is a reminder to honor the higher dimension and at the same time to feel its connection to the earth and to ourselves. This energy inspired me to compose Ypsilon, A Poem for Trumpet and Orchestra in Five Scenes and the music tells the story.

When I started to write down the sketches of the piece in 2019 and composed the first notes immediately afterwards, I had planned a different concept for the course of the composition than it turned out to be. I was already in the middle of the composition process when the corona pandemic started, when the lockdowns of the corona phase and the other restrictions forced us to behave differently than before. I realized how my ideas and thoughts were changing and taking me in a different direction than I had planned. Fundamental questions about life and music resurfaced again, and I urgently searched within myself for new answers of existence and art. An even stronger longing than usual for melody, rhythm, sounds and their simplicity accompanied me intensely. The different moods, a new musical dramaturgy, playing chamber music in an orchestra, silence and the contradictory sounds were urgently seeking a union within me.

A poem of notes, about the coexistence of different sounds, musical styles and about the memory that everything is one and can exist together, was created as a result. This is how the dramaturgy of the musical poem unfolded with the five scenes of Ypsilon.

In Ypsilon, the solo instrument is the bearer of various statements that become noticeable throughout the piece with different musical elements – as they express themselves sometimes subtle, sometimes leading, sometimes flattering and sometimes explosive. The orchestra acts, reacts, comments, stimulates and thus constantly enters into a new sonic union with the soloist. The composition flows between the scenes with short pauses for suspense and sounds as if the sonic events of Y are being told like a story under a common arc.

Ypsilon, A Poem for Trumpet and Orchestra in Five Scenes begins with a solo in the trumpet – like a cadenza, like a signal. The orchestra sings and plays in a calm but intense mood and both together move between calls, lullabies and blues. A short improvisational mood by the first percussionists after the specified elements then characterizes one of the quiet passages.

The second scene sounds like an intense dialog between the explosive rhythmic elements of the orchestra and the cadences of the soloist, which are described as a speech between the orchestral groups. Rhythmic elements, which are distributed in different groups, recur and each time they sound more intense than the previous time.

The third scene builds up more and more of an atmospheric mood and serves as an intense echo of the second scene and at the same time as a sound bridge to the next scene. Here the groups of the orchestra also perform as soloists, reacting to the overall sound that is created in a chamber music style – playing predetermined elements and also shaping them themselves individually. This influences the mood of the composition and creates an individual, new sound combination and tension in each performance. The role of the conductor in this scene is to balance the overall mood and coordinate the performances of the various groups and their silencing.

In the fourth scene, new, strongly melodic-rhythmic elements appear and create a characteristic, accentuated dance, which is reminiscent of a slightly jazzy character due to the frequent changes of beat. The soloist acts and reacts explosively and is partly free to decide on the dramaturgical design, the sequence of phrases and the combination and repetition of the given patterns.

The fifth scene has the final character of a complete echo, a transformation: a new signal, which differs from the one at the beginning of the work, unites with the orchestra. The result is a final, simple, short dialog between the percussionist and the soloist, like a question and answer. In this scene, it is desired that the audience also takes on a singing role, which the conductor indicates to the audience and leads them. The conductor decides whether this action is possible and appropriate. The singing action for the audience seemed necessary to me in this composition, because therefore the stage and the audience unite to experience something together. The singing only lasts a short time, but the emotional and unifying experience can last a very long time.

The recurring attitude of the self-styled solo voice – also in this part – depends on the soloist and how they realize it. The dialog between soloist and orchestra should remain lively from beginning to end.

The piece concludes with an atmospheric, unexpected tonal openness to provide space for resonance, reflection and empathy.

Christopher Rouse – Symphony No. 6 (2019)
I. Desolato
II. Piacevole
III. Furioso
IV. Passacaglia

In my earlier years I found the task of writing a program note for a new work a comparatively easy, even pleasant, one. More than a few of my pieces had some sort of quasi-programmatic basis, and I found that I could often say much about the sources of inspiration in hopes that my observations might help the listener better understand my intent. In more recent years, however, I find that my new pieces fall into one of two categories: (a) scores that, while always placing emotional expression at the forefront of my intent, had no particular story or triggering event that led to the work’s composition, or (b) works that were so deeply personal that I found myself reluctant to share intimately private sources of motivation. In both cases, though, it seemed that there wasn’t much I could say.

My Sixth Symphony inhabiting the second of these two groups, I hope listeners will not be disappointed if I limit myself to more “objective” observations about the music. Commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, this twenty-five minute symphony was completed at my home in Baltimore on June 6, 2019. The first challenge I face when planning a new piece is to settle upon a beginning and an ending and to decide the number and order of movements; in this case, I (rather unusually for me) chose a more-or-less standard four-movement structure with the outer movements being slow in tempo and elegiac in mood. The two middle movements are faster and the third, in particular, is meant to be highly dramatic. As is usual in my music, each movement connects to its successor without a break. In each of my symphonies I’ve also chosen to use an instrument or instrumental combination that might be seen as somewhat unusual in a symphonic context. My First Symphony, for example, requires a quartet of Wagner tubas. Here I have chosen to make use of the fluegelhorn, a larger and more mellow member of the trumpet family, and it is the fluegelhorn that presents the symphony’s opening melodic material; it returns later in the first movement and again near the end of the entire work as a way of bringing the music “full circle”. The scoring comprises two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets (second doubling of bass clarinet), two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets (first doubling on fluegelhorn), three trombones, tuba, harp, timpani, percussion (two players), and strings. As is also my wont, the harmonic language traverses areas of substantive dissonance as well as sections much more consonant (especially near the end of the symphony).

I know the “meaning” of this work in my own mind but wish to leave it to each listener to decide for him or herself what this could be. My main hope is that it will communicate something sincere in meaning to those who hear it.