World premiere of Swensen’s ‘The Fire and the Rose’

By -

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra performs the world premiere of Joseph Swensen’s Symphony for horn and orchestra ‘The Fire and the Rose’ in Glasgow City Halls on Friday 3 April, and Edinburgh Queen’s Hall on Saturday 4 April, conducted by Swensen (pictured) himself and featuring virtuoso horn player Radovan Vlatković, for whom the work was written. The new symphony is programmed alongside Sibelius’ Pelléas and Mélisande and Respighi’s The Birds.

The Fire and the Rose is the largest scale work Swensen has written to date, both in length and instrumentation. Swensen took his inspiration from T.S. Eliot’s poem, Four Quartets, a poem that was written in response to Beethoven’s late string quartets. The two main themes are time and remembering, with many references to déjà vu in Eliot’s poem. Swensen has captured the essence of déjà vu by creating echoes of echoes which reverberate throughout the piece. The symphony features an extensive range of percussion, from cowbells to marimba, as well as samples of other instruments played on synthesizers.

Swensen says of his new work:
“I wrote the Symphony in reverse (the last movement being written first, and so on) and I often felt as if I were trying to remember a dream, from the relative clarity of the ending, backwards toward the nearly forgotten events of the beginning... All the musical material is closely related – the handful of motifs and melodies with which it is built are not, for the most part, developed as in traditional classical symphonies: rather they are repeated in ever varied ways and contexts through the work.”

Joseph Swensen will be talking about his new work at pre-concert talks in both Glasgow and Edinburgh – free to ticket-holders.

Edinburgh audiences can hear horn player Radovan Vlatković perform in a more intimate Sunday afternoon chamber concert at the Queen’s Hall on Sunday 5 April at 2:30pm. Vlatković performs Dohnanyi’s Sextet with an SCO Ensemble, and the Orchestra’s Principal Clarinet, Maximilliano Martín, takes the solo in Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet.

THE FIRE AND THE ROSE
RESPIGHI The Birds
SIBELIUS Pelléas and Mélisande
SWENSEN Symphony for horn and orchestra ‘The Fire and the Rose’ World premiere

Joseph Swensen, conductor
Radovan Vlatković, horn

Friday 3 April, 7:30pm Glasgow City Halls
Saturday 4 April, 7:30pm Edinburgh Queen’s Hall

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Role of Music in Opera

By -
There are numerous books on the topic, and every composer, librettist, director, singer and audience member has their opinion as to what role the music should play in an opera. In a play without music, the words ought to support the meaning behind a character's actions. However, in the case of action movies, often times the action is what tells the story and there aren't words, just images to forward the plot. We might hear music to accompany action, build tension, but the action tells the story. Musicals tend to speak until the emotion of the moment just "has" to break out in song - unless it's something like "Mama Mia" where the dialog is the rails we travel on between songs; the songs themselves, written before the concept of the musical, are the focus of the production, while the story is secondary. Operas are a different beast. The music provides emotion to the words spoken, but it also plays the role of ambience when there is only action. In ...
Read more

Episode 210b: Joyeuse le départ

By -
Image
Podcast:  Play in new window  |  Download Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts  |  Android  |  Google Play  |  Stitcher  |  TuneIn  |  RSS Provost Cunningham has Transmigrated, but to where! What is Dr Sage going to do with his body? And how can she bring home her friends, Abigail and Erasmus, without also bring home Cunningham? What are they going to say when they find the “skeleton” she’s hiding in her closet? Cast: Eddie Louise Clark  as Dr Sage Chip Clark  as Professor Savant Justin Bremer  as the Narrator Emily Riley Piatt  as Abigail Entwhistle, Calypso & Dean Stewart Written by  Eddie Louise Theme music by  Unwoman Sound Design by  Chip Michael
Read more

Teaching Composition – What are we trying to achieve

By -
In the process of learning composition I have spent time with a number of instructors who have encouraged me to write twelve-tone, pitch-class, electro-acoustic and other forms of experimental techniques. No matter how much I might understand and appreciate the work of other composers in the genres, these are not forms of music I resonate with. They are simply not forms of music I listen to and I struggle with the idea of writing them. However, in a Master Class by Libby Larsen she made the comment, “Learn them all, because all forms of music have something to offer.” This I very much agree. There are elements of each of the above mentioned forms (and others) that I do resonate with. Berg’s Violin Concerto is a beautiful twelve-tone work, although it is possible to look at numerous sections of the music with a “tonal” analysis. Another composer friend, Gary Bachlund commented that using these techniques can narrow the choices for how to compose a piece of work. If you look at ...
Read more