Manitoba Chamber Orchestra
Karl Stobbe, Concertmaster
Westminster United Church
19 February 2008

Kiran Ahluwalia

Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
Divertimento, for strings (1939)

1. Allegro
2. Molto adagio
3. Allegro assai

Various composers
Traditional music

Kiran Ahluwalia & ensemble

Intermission
Refreshments are available upstairs in the concert hall.

Alan Hovhannes (1911-2000)
Armenian Rhapsody, no. 2, op. 51

Glenn Buhr (b. 1954)
New composition
CBC commission / World premiere performance

This concert is co-presented
by CBC Radio Two and is being recorded
for Canada Live with host Wabanakwut Kinew,
Monday to Friday at 8 pm, Studio Sparks
with host Eric Friesen, Monday to Friday
from 12 noon to 3 pm, Sundays at 1 pm
with host Bill Richardson.

Concert sponsor / Investors Group
Season sponsor / The Great-West Life Assurance Company
Print media sponsor / Winnipeg Free Press
Radio media sponsors / CBC Radio Two 98.3,
CBC Radio One 990 and Golden West Radio
Chamber Chatter sponsor / PricewaterhouseCoopers
Electronic media sponsor / Shaw Cable

Anne Manson

Conductor Anne Manson has achieved a series of historic milestones. She was the first woman to conduct at the Salzburg Festival, where she led the Vienna Philharmonic and a cast that included Samuel Ramey and Philip Langridge in a production of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov which met with great critical acclaim.

Ms. Manson is one of only three women to have been appointed music director of a leading American symphony orchestra — the Kansas City Symphony — which she directed from 1999 to 2003. She launched her career in 1988 as Music Director of the London-based Mecklenburgh Opera, where, over a span of eight years, she programmed operas ranging from Mozart to 20th-century rarities, while commissioning world premieres from numerous composers.

Ms. Manson continues to take on new challenges in her career as she balances acknowledged masterworks with vanguard contemporary works. In July and August 2007, she conducted Philip Glass’s Orphée at Glimmerglass Opera. Of these performances, The New York Times raved, “As presented here… vibrantly conducted by Anne Manson, Mr. Glass’s work was the surprise hit: a rich, complex and challenging experience… Ms. Manson managed to bring balance, clarity, and richness to the performance.” The Wall Street Journal said, “Anne Manson’s skillful conducting…maintained the pulse of the opera and kept the orchestral writing clear.” During the 07/08 Season, Ms. Manson will lead the Juilliard Orchestra on October 11 in a program featuring Zhou Long’s Rhyme of Taigu, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, Jennifer Higdon’s fanfare ritmico, and Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin. In November, she will make her New York City Opera debut, conducting the company’s first production of Barber’s Vanessa. In January, Ms. Manson will lead the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra in a concert celebrating the 75th anniversary of the orchestra’s founding.

In November 2006, Ms. Manson led Offenbach’s Orphée aux Enfers with the Juilliard Opera Center, about which the Financial Times praised, “[Anne Manson] untied every rhythmic and melodic knot of this naughty opera bouffon with flair that buoyed both a splendid orchestra and an eager cast. She imposed fast tempos that never seemed rushed, transparent textures that never seemed precious. She sustained propulsion without leaving anyone breathless. It was an elegant achievement.”

Other highlights of Ms. Manson’s 2006/07 season included tours with the MDR Orchestra, Leipzig (works of Mozart and Handel), and the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra (works of Tchaikovsky, Borodin, and Shostakovich), as well as performances by the orchestras of Grand Canaria and Asturias. She recorded for the BIS label with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (works of Vaughan Williams, Lundquist, Arutunian, and John Williams) and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra (works of Mari Takano).

What most distinguishes Ms. Manson as a conductor are her dynamic podium presence, stylistic versatility, and ability to draw audiences into the inner world of the composer. Critics have hailed Ms. Manson’s conducting as “passionately intense,” “exciting,” and “wonderfully precise,” with a “sense of spontaneity and naturalness.” The San Francisco Chronicle writes, “Ms. Manson showed a gift for balancing the texture of a full orchestra … and for always teasing out the main points within a range of stylistic approaches.” Of her New York debut leading an all-Ives concert in 2004, The New York Times noted, “Ms. Manson, a slender and modest presence on the podium, gave a commanding account of this challenging score. Her cues were precise; her focus was on drawing music from the players, not attention to herself. … she made a strong first impression on this Ives fan.”

Her reputation for excellence in the central German repertory, combined with a passionate advocacy of the music of the present, has led to invitations to some of the most important concert stages in the world. One of her first successes was to conduct Kurt Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins at the BBC Proms, followed by an appearance at the Berlin Biennale conducting Hans Werner Henze’s 70th Birthday celebration concert and a concert with the Scharoun Ensemble (drawn from the Berlin Philharmonic) at the Konzerthaus Köln. While based in London, she conducted regularly at Queen Elizabeth Hall. In Europe she has led concerts with the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the London Philharmonic, the Royal National Scottish Orchestra, and the Residentie Orchestra of the Hague, among many others. In America, her engagements include concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra., and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. She has recorded with the BBC Scottish Symphony, the Residentie Orchestra, and the Symphony Orchestra of Iceland.

Ms. Manson’s opera work is equally diverse, from Mozart and Mussorgsky to works of Kurt Weill and Carlisle Floyd, to such little-known 20th century works as Viktor Ullman’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis and Judith Weir’s Missa del Cid. In 2005, she conducted Così fan tutte for San Francisco Opera, and returned for the third time to Washington National Opera to conduct the world premiere of Scott Wheeler’s Democracy, commissioned by Placido Domingo. Other major productions include Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah with Samuel Ramey and Nancy Gustafson for the Grand Theatre, Geneva.

Ms. Manson lives in Washington, DC, with her husband and two sons.

Kiran Ahluwalia

Kiran Ahluwalia is a performer of Indian and Pakistani vocal music, particularly the ghazal, a form of poetic sung verse that originated in Persia about one thousand years ago and reached India some four hundred years later. Kiran was born in India to Punjabi parents and the family moved to Toronto when she was nine. As a child she was entranced by the sound and feel of the music with which she was surrounded in the Indian community. Despite later graduating from the University of Toronto with a degree in Industrial Relations and landing a safe job, in 1990 she decided to pursue a full-time career in music. She went to India, received her training in classical music and then studied with Vithal Rao, a man of legendary vocal ability and a living link to the old ghazal genre. She also traveled around Punjab, her ancestral region, and spent time with traditional singers, absorbing their style. She then started performing in Canada and the US, meanwhile acquiring a business degree and working for Saturday Night magazine, CBC Radio and WTN.

Kiran Ahluwalia is not only an interpreter of ghazals; she is also a creator. As a composer she is forging a new repertoire, putting words of Indo- and Pakistani-Canadian poets to her own musical compositions — music that is firmly rooted in tradition — while taking a contemporary turn. In 2001 she released her first album, Kashish — Attraction, which was nominated for a Juno Award in the World Music category.

Her second CD, Beyond Boundaries, won the 2004 Juno Award for Best World Music Recording and Ahluwalia started performing on international stages. Her performances became so successful that she was awarded the 2004 Canadian Arts Presenters Touring Artist of the Year.

In 2005 Kiran signed an international record deal with Triloka / Artemis. Her self-titled international debut album was released in 2005. This album comprises remixed and remastered highlights from Ahluwalia’s previous releases, and includes two brand new songs with guest artist, Cape Breton fiddler Natalie McMaster.

It can be said that Kiran Ahluwalia is truly becoming a global musician for the 21st century.

Glenn Buhr

Winnipeg-born Glenn Buhr has composed orchestral, chamber and choral works that have been performed in Europe and North America.

Buhr studied composition with Lawrence Ritchey and Casey Sokol at the University of Manitoba, with William Benjamin and Stephen Chatman at the University of British Columbia, and with William Albright, Leslie Bassett and William Bolcom at the University of Michigan, where he earned his DMA in 1984.

His honors include the SOCAN Prize (for Beren and Lúthien), a prize in the CBC young composers competition (for le rêve rêvient…), the Italian Pro Loco Corciano Prize (for Epigrams), and First Prize in the competition of the American Harp Society (for Tanzmusik). More recently, he received the Prairie Music Award for Outstanding Classical Recording of the Year (2000, for the CBC recording of winter poems). Other CDs featuring his works have earned him three Juno nominations. In addition, he has received commissions from the Detroit Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, pianist Janina Fialkowska, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, the Penderecki String Quartet, the Toronto Children’s Chorus, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, among other ensembles, orchestras and soloists.

Buhr is also active in other positions. He co-founded with Bramwell Tovey the Winnipeg New Music Festival in 1990 and served as its curator from 1990-96. He also served as composer-in-residence to the orchestra from 1990-96 and has since been the orchestra’s Artist Laureate. Recently, he served as music director of the St. Norbert Arts and Cultural Centre and artistic director of the Music in the Ruins festival in Manitoba and has served as director of new music for the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra since 2002. He is occasionally active as a guest conductor with orchestras in Canada.

He has taught as Professor of Composition and University Research Professor (the first creative artist to earn this title at the university) at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo since 1998 and has composed numerous scores for dance, film and stage productions.

Divertimento
Béla Bartók

It was a chance encounter with a Transylvanian-born peasant girl named Lidi Dósa, whom Bartók overheard singing about a red apple while she was doing household chores, which sparked his interest in going into rural Hungary to collect indigenous melodies. This pursuit occupied much of his attention for the rest of his life, and established his reputation as a leading researcher in the nascent field of ethnomusicology.

It also had a profound impact on his composition. Alongside of his scholarly collections, Bartók began to publish concert versions of certain songs, at first with simple unobtrusive accompaniments. In certain songs, however, he gave as much interest to his piano as to his vocal parts, allowing the flavour of the melody to find fuller expression there. The logical next step was to try to integrate folk technique into more significant works; it was from these experiments that his mature compositional style arose.

Bartók’s masterful 20th century take on the concerto grosso, the Divertimento for string orchestra, shows its folk roots from the opening bars. In the accompaniment, both the drone bass and the punchy, asymmetric ostinato rhythm are suggestive of Eastern European peasant dances. The melody gets its folk flavour from the consecutive use of two different scales, or modes, the first using an E-natural, and the second an E-flat. This would be quite an unusual theme in a piece of 19th century art music, but it is fairly typical of Slavic folk song. It was just this bimodal characteristic that caught Bartók’s attention when he heard Lidi Dósa singing.

In Bartók’s music this juxtaposition of two contrasting modes is not confined to melodies; rather it functions as a central element in much of his harmonic language. Though based in both the tonal harmony of 19th century composition, and the modal harmony of folk music (itself inherited and adapted from the church music of the 16th century and earlier), the resulting sound is clearly outside both. The Divertimento is an instructive example to consider, because one can hear this language being built up right within the piece.

The opening tune introduces the idea of modal contrast in its melodic form — one hears E-natural, and then the contradictory E-flat follows hard on its heels. The resulting sound, while flavourful, presents only a very mild conflict, because it occurs at two separate points in time. Later in the piece, this tune gets thrown around the orchestra, going from instrument to instrument or back and forth between tutti and solo groups. The contrapuntal form of contrast that arises is stronger than the melodic, because every now and then both flavours of the same note line up at the same instant, creating a direct harmonic conflict or dissonance.

However, while the ear may not appreciate these sounds together, they make sense within their own melodies. It would be a different story if Bartók were simply to play the two notes simultaneously, and have us accept that dissonance as a chord in its own right — but in fact this is exactly what he does. In the first movement, this last and most antagonistic harmonic version of the conflict between modes is reserved for special duties: making formal divisions, creating tension, adding violence to climaxes.

The second movement plunges us deeper into this harmonic language, without much to speak of in the way of melody. The modal contrasts are presented using the same procedures as in the first movement, but now they bleed into every area of the texture. Even the ostinato accompaniments are not simply repeated notes (as in the outer movements) but instead sinuous arabesques, twisting in and out of tune with the rest of the texture. The result is haunting and uncomfortable, full of the foreboding one might expect from a work written just weeks before the Nazi invasion of Poland.

The finale comes as welcome relief after the claustrophobic middle movement. Again the orchestra plays a lot of scales, and a lot of tag, but the harmonies are much more open and inviting than in the opening movement, and the folk aspects are allowed an uncomplicatedly boisterous gallivant, only fleetingly interrupted first by a charming little fugato, and finally (for some reason) a swarm of bees.

Armenian Rhapsody, no. 2, op. 51
Alan Hovhannes

While there was much hype during the 20th century regarding the ‘end of tonality,’ the rumours of its demise were greatly exaggerated. Bartók’s music, for instance, was not atonal, just strongly dissonant. Indeed, if there was an overriding difference between the Western art music of the 20th century and that of the rest of the millenium, it was simply that it was acceptable to write music in which the ugly sounds outweighed the pretty ones.

Alan Hovhannes was not among those composers who believed that the way forward for music depended upon devising new systems of harmony. In his words:

“It is hard to say why I write tonal music [as opposed to atonal]. I write what I have to write. I’m forced to write it by a tremendous force, and it’s not worth doing otherwise. Tonal music includes all the music of the Greeks, all the music of India, all the music of ancient Armenia, all the music of Japan, all the humanistic music of the world.”

The “tremendous force” of which he spoke was internal. He had his first mystical experience at an early age, practiced meditation throughout his adult life, and often dreamed music, which he would then have to get up and write out before it escaped him. On one occasion, when he set to work composing based on one of these dreams, the music returned in a subsequent dream to correct his previous transcription!

Hovhannes was born in Massachusetts to an Armenian father and a mother of Scottish descent, neither of whom encouraged their son in the musical career he himself wanted. Young Alan was apparently motivated by this resistance, getting his first big break as a composer when he was granted a scholarship to study at Tanglewood with Bohuslav Martinuû in 1942. Unfortunately, Martinuû suffered an accident that summer, and his master classes were taught by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein instead, who treated Hovhannes’s work with undisguised contempt.

This experience fortified Hovhannes’s feelings about the current musical climate, which he had already expressed the previous year:

“I propose to create an heroic, monumental style of composition simple enough to inspire all people, completely free from fads, artificial mannerisms and false sophistications, direct, forceful, sincere, always original but never unnatural. Music must be freed from decadence and stagnation … It is not my purpose to supply a few pseudo intellectual musicians and critics with more food for brilliant argumentation, but rather to inspire all mankind with new heroism and spiritual nobility.”

Whether in a spirit of defiance or discouragement, Hovhannes destroyed many of his works after returning from Tanglewood, and embarked on a new style with a strong focus on Armenian music. The Armenian Rhapsodies date from this period, and are exceptional in comparison with his other works from this time in that they are based on and hew closely to specific Armenian melodies. The writing in the second Rhapsody, which is modal, meditative and mystical, relies on long, affecting melodies, presented sometimes simply — over slow-moving harmonies and drone basses — and at other times antiphonally or contrapuntally.

 

 

Anne Manson / Music Director and Conductor

MCO's 2010/11 season is sponsored by The Great-West Life Assurance Company.
Support has been received from Media sponsors The Winnipeg Free Press, CBC Radio One 990,
CBC Radio 2 98.3, Espace musique 89,9 and Golden West Radio. Heartstrings gala sponsor:
Mann Financial Assurance Limited. Sponsor of open dress rehearsals: Canadian Bridge Federation.
Arts Accessibility Program: Sun Life Financial.

© 2010 Manitoba Chamber Orchestra