October 30, 2024 / 8:00pm / MÜZİKSEV

Program

Özkan Manav, What the Earth Whispers (2015) for piano trio   10´

Harrison Birtwistle, Double Hocket (2007) for piano trio   3´*

Alican Çamcı, galanterie redux (2020) for violoncello   5´

Dilay Doğanay, transtiple (2024) for piano trio  7´* *

Arnold Schönberg, Phantasie op. 47 (1949) for violin & piano   10´

Elliott Carter, Epigrams (2012) for piano, violin, and violoncello   15´*

*Türkiye premiere.   ** World Premiere

Josje ter Haar – Violin; Jessica Kuhn – Violoncello; Christof Hahn – Piano; Stephan Meier – Direction

Program Notes

Özkan Manav, What the Earth Whispers (2015)

The basic material of this piece strolls at the edge: At the edge of silence, noise, sound, palpable forms, shadows, light or darkness. It is a fragile soundscape, intentionally left open to diverse renditions, hoping to provoke the imagination of the listeners and sharpen their perception. Music –flowing in the field of metaphors– implies things but does not expressly point out. Poetry and visual arts have the same potential at their core, but music may employ a bunch of them simultaneously when needed. I always believe in the infinity of the human imagination, not only for an artist or musician, for every person. (The word “earth” in the English title of the piece refers to “soil”, the material in which plants grow, not to the World.) 

Harrison Birtwistle, Double Hocket (2007)

In his short piano trio, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, or Harry, as he used to be called by everyone who knew him, makes extensive use of expressing his love for polyphonic structures.The medieval technique “hoquetus” meaning two or more voices complementing each other to one line, forms two layers, but isn’t exclusively giving shape; he spreads out his typically fragmented elements across the entire range of pitch.

Alican Çamcı, galanterie redux, (2020)

In galanterie redux, a machine learning algorithm uses the fifth movements of each of Bach’s six cello suites (referred to as galanteries, these are the only “nonstandard” movements of the suites) as its training set. Based on the musical information extracted from this corpus, the algorithm creates new music, which serves as the source material for the piece. In particular, I focus on passages that sound slightly bizarre: isolated fragments that modulate unexpectedly, are cut short immaturely, or are incorrect syntactically. In galanterie redux, these isolated segments are presented through a filter of distortion, creating hollowed-out, blurry snapshots from a Bach-machine. The melodies are rendered bodiless; like silhouettes floating in between silences.

Dilay Doğanay, transtiple (2024)

–transtiple– is a piece for Piano Trio that has been composed for Izmir New Music Days-V, to be performed by Das Neue Ensemble. –transtiple– is a nonexistent portmanteau word coined by the composer that consists of the words “transformation” and “multiple”. Some materialistic ideas has been worked on for a long period on different pieces, this is the most current stage of this transition for the time being. The piano’s motions are the main emphasis of the piece. Cello and violin intensify and prolong these occurrences.

Arnold Schönberg, Phantasie op. 47, (1949)

In March 1949Arnold Schönberg, who had emigrated to the USA in 1933, composed a ‘piece for violin solo, accompanied by the piano’ at the behest of the violinist Adolph Koldofsky; at this time he was also composing the choral pieces  Dreimal tausend Jahre  and  Israel Exists Again. The method of composition, which can be clearly determined from the manuscript sources, reveals that the soloistic nature of the violin part – both conceptually and as indicated in the title – should be taken at face value: Schönberg first wrote out the complete violin part (which he completed on 22nd March 1949) before finishing the piano accompaniment a week later. For the first performance, in the context of his 75th birthday on 13th September 1949, Schönberg provided an alternative ending for Koldofsky, who performed the piece and whom the composer regarded as an ideal interpreter.

In Schönberg’s book Structural Functions of Harmony, the fantasy as a genre was ranked among the ‘so-called free forms’, characterized by its opulent figuration, instrumental improvisation and spontaneous expression. Schönberg’s dodecaphonic Phantasy has points of contact with its classical and neo-classical forebears insofar as its virtuosic writing can be compared to that in Schubert’s Fantasy in C major for violin and its formal disposition can be likened with Mozart’s Fantasy in C minor, KV. 475. Research has shown that the kaleidoscopic sequence of mutually interrupting sections in Mozart’s fantasy is also a pattern that is applicable to Schönberg’s piece. The architectural structure of Schönberg’s Phantasy still allows us to suspect an underlying major/minor mode of thought, as do the harmonic regions it explores, although these are based an dodecaphonic foundations. The weighting of rhythmical and metrical components in the music also indicates this and, moreover, the outline of a single-movement reprise structure within a sonata cycle is perceptible.

In coarse schematic terms the Phantasy is divided into four parts: a motif-forming section with transition (the main idea in the work is six bars long), a Lento section that could be compared to the slow movement of a sonata, a scherzando passage and a coda (each with transitions). The Phantasy undeniably possesses a certain classical, Viennese tone; this expressive aesthetic is, for instance, sometimes nourished by dance-like triple metres of which counterparts can be found in similarly violinistic writing from Schubert to Mahler. The technical variety of the delicate soundscape ranges from doublestopping of extremely large intervals, glissandi, pizzicati and harmonics to complicated tremolo effects and dynamically differentiated chord arpeggios.

Therese Muxeneder | © Arnold Schönberg Center, Wien

Elliott Carter, Epigrams (2012)

Epigramsconsists of twelve short movements for piano trio. Like the ancient Greek literary form on which they are modeled, the movements are characterized by surprising and witty changes of direction and mood. Epigrams wasElliott Carter’s final composition, completed in the spring and summer of 2012 and premiered posthumously on June 22, 2013 at the Aldeburgh Festival by Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano, and members of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.

Das Neue Ensemble

Daniel Agi, flute

Udo Grimm, clarinet

Christof Hahn, piano

Stephan Meier, percussion and direction

Josje ter Haar, violin

Jessica Kuhn, violoncello

Das Neue Ensemble was founded in 1993 by its members around artistic director Stephan Meier. Since then, the Hanover-based ensemble has earned a place among internationally successful contemporary music ensembles. In 2005, they received the Inventio Prize of the German Music Council for innovative programming; in 2015, The New York Times, BBC Radio 3, The Sunday Times and Metropolitan Opera News recommended its CD “Harrison Birtwistle: Songs 1970 – 2006.” But they have also won a wide regular audience with cross-genre productions such as “Gelbe Klänge” at the Sprengel Museum Hannover, the “DaDaBus” in the footsteps of Kurt Schwitters, with Stockhausen’s STERNKLANG in the open air, and programs for children.

The Neue Ensemble has worked closely with composers such as Harrison Birtwistle, Rebecca Saunders, Wolfgang Rihm, Helmut Lachenmann, Carola Bauckholt, George Lewis, Johannes Schöllhorn and Mark André. Guest soloists and conductors have included Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Peter Rundel, Johannes Kalitzke, Stefan Asbury, and Sarah Maria Sun.

The New Ensemble has performed at the NDR Hamburg, musica viva of the BR Munich, Philharmonie and WDR Cologne, at the Goethe Institute in Riga, Nizhny-Novgorod and Munich, in Amsterdam, Krakow, Paris and Beijing. It was a participant in the World Music Days, the cultural program of the German Pavilion at Expo 2000; it has recorded and released productions for radio and CD on behalf of WDR, NDR, br and ORB. The double anniversary of the last German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was celebrated by Das Neue Ensemble together with Ensemble ConTempo Beijing, the NDR Radiophilharmonie, the Hessischer Rundfunk and the Leibniz Society in 2016 in the International Composition Competition “Leibniz’s Harmonies”; patrons were the Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the Chinese Ambassador in Berlin, Shi Mingde.

For several years, the ensemble has regularly commissioned works, most recently to Sir Harrison Birtwistle, whose “Songs from the Holy Forest” was premiered in 2017/18 in the presence of the composer at Kölner Philharmonie and NDR Hannover.

Das Neue Ensemble is supported by its sponsoring association Musik für heute e.V., which has also rented its rehearsal and office space in the Alte Grammophonfabrik and is finding new audiences with introductory formats and house concerts.

The honorary president of the association is Helmut Lachenmann.

CDs:

• Nicolas Tzorzis: Les Mystères (2019, toccata records, mit Unterstützung von MFA)

• Harrison Birtwistle – Songs 1970-2006 (2015, Toccata-Records, Naxos, Kooperation NDR)

• Johannes Schöllhorn: Liu-Yi (2008, æon, Kooperation WDR)

• Pierre Boulez: Le Marteau sans Maître, Leitung: Peter Rundel (2000, Kooperation NDR)

• Dansce instrumental mit Werken von Kyburz, Hosokawa, Vivier und Schleiermacher (2000)

• Gelbe Klänge mit Mitschnitten aus dem Sprengel Museum Hannover (1999)