Ongoing work with percussionist Evelyn Glennie

When Evelyn Glennie returns to Winnipeg for this concert, it will also be to test repertoire for a future recording project.

The programme below will be performed, but we’re in for a bit of a surprise, as MCO’s Anne Manson and the percussionist have yet to settle a Vivaldi / Bach question.

"To be honest," says Glennie, "I feel the percussion would be out of place for the Brandenburgs, as all the parts and sound colours are intertwined, whereas with the concertos one can afford to have a different sound colour. The A minor concerto is good and would work on vibraphone, but doesn’t have the zing of the C major concerto, which I feel is the best of all."

We shall see what happens!

José Evangelista

We like José Evangelista, and he likes us! "I’ve been regularly honoured by the MCO performing my music." MCOphiles will recall that Evangelista’s Concerto con brio was programmed, but not played, in the 2010/11 season.

"This concerto-like work for string quartet and string orchestra was inspired by the music of Vivaldi. I have always admired, among other things, this grand master’s capacity to create music that is totally immediate, filled with energy and imagination …"

Pre-concert event

Pacific Junction Orff Club; Dianne Sjoberg, director; 6:45 pm

Programme

Arcangelo Corelli
Sonata in D Minor, Op. 5, No. 12, ‘La folia’

Christos Hatzis
Zeitgeist

Antonio Vivaldi
Concerto for Two Cellos in G Minor (RV 531)
— arr. Evelyn Glennie

Michael Oesterle
Kaluza Klein, for vibraphone and strings
Canada Council commission, world premiere

José Evangelista
Concerto con brio

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
Flute Concerto in G Major, H445/WQ169

Concert sponsors:
Drs. Bill Pope & Elizabeth Tippett-Pope
— an Anniversary Celebration

Evelyn Glennie

Evelyn Glennie is the first person in musical history successfully to create and sustain a full-time career as a solo percussionist. As one of the most eclectic and innovative musicians on the scene today, she is constantly redefining the goals and expectations of percussion. By combining superb technique, a profound appreciation of the visual and her astonishing musicality, Evelyn creates performances of such vitality that they almost constitute a new type of performance. She gives more than 100 concerts a year worldwide, working with the greatest conductors, orchestras and artists. For the first ten years of her career, virtually every performance she gave was in some way a first — the first time an orchestra had performed with a percussion soloist, the first solo percussion performance at a venue or festival or the world premiere of a new piece. She has collaborated with artists such as Nana Vasoncelos, Kodo, Béla Fleck, Björk, Bobby McFerrin, Emanuel Ax, Sting, the Kings Singers, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Fred Frith.

Evelyn composes and records music for film and television and has commissioned one hundred and sixty new works for solo percussion from many of the world's most eminent composers. Her first high quality drama produced a score so original she was nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award — the UK equivalent of the Oscar.

Evelyn Glennie continuously explores other areas of creativity — from writing a best-selling autobiography, Good Vibrations, to collaborating with the renowned film director Thomas Riedelsheimer on a film called Touch the Sound, to presenting two series of her own television programmes for the BBC.

Evelyn's activities also include lobbying the government on political issues as diverse as music education and parking rights for motor bikes (she is a keen biker). Her consortium with Sir James Galway, Julian Lloyd Webber and the late Michael Caman successfully led to the government providing 332 million pounds sterling towards music education. Evelyn is also an international motivational speaker to many corporate companies and events and — yet another example of her varied accomplishments — she performs with orchestras on the Great Highland Bagpipes. After twenty years in the music business, she has begun teaching privately, which allows her to explore the art of teaching and the world of sound therapy as a means of communication.

In 1993 Evelyn was awarded the OBE (Officer of the British Empire). This was later extended to 'Dame Commander' for her services to music, and to date she has received approximately eighty international awards. She is brimming with ideas to improve the experience for the audience and continues to redefine the very format of live performance itself.

In 2009, Glennie and the MCO conducted an 11-concert tour across western Canada.

Christos Hatzis

With numerous presentations of his music in Canada, USA, Europe and elsewhere every year, a continuous stream of commissions by an international list of soloists and ensembles and several recording projects by major and independent labels, 2008 and 2006 Juno Award winner Christos Hatzis "is currently enjoying a growing international reputation as one of the most important composers writing today" (CBC Records). A professor of composition at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, Christos Hatzis has received several national and international distinctions such as the 2008 Jan V. Matejcek Concert Music Award (SOCAN) and both the Prix Italia and Prix Bohemia.

Audience members might recall the hugely successful Hatzis 2002/03 composition, Pyrrichean Dances, for viola, percussion and strings — with soloists Beverley Johnston and Rivka Golani and the MCO — and the more recent Mirage? with Dame Evelyn Glennie and the MCO.

Recent projects include Two Pieces for Hilary Hahn, which the renowned violinist commissioned and will tour during the 2011/12 and 2012/13 seasons before recording them on CD; Departures, a flute concerto for Susan Hoeppner and the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra; Four Songs on Poems by Elizabeth Bishop for soprano Suzie LeBlanc and orchestra: Redemption: Book 1 for the Pacifica String Quartet and the City Music Cleveland Orchestra, and Credo for the multi-platinum recording artist (13 million CDs) George Dalaras and orchestra. Recent premieres include that of Credo in a sold-out Dalaras / Hatzis concert in Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, New York in November 2010. Future projects include a song cycle for Canadian pop singer Sarah Slean and orchestra and a concerto for jazz guitar legend Al Di Meola.

Hatzis's music is inspired by early Christian spirituality, his own Byzantine music heritage, world cultures and various non-classical music genres such as jazz, pop and world musics. He is an advocate of borderless culture and many of his most recent works bridge the gap between classical music and today's popular music idioms. He has created several works inspired by the music of the Inuit, Canada's arctic inhabitants. These Inuit-inspired works, particularly the award-winning radio documentary, Footprints in New Snow, have promoted Inuit culture around the globe. His strongest inspiration is his own religious faith, and his religious works have been hailed by critics and audiences alike as contemporary masterpieces. Hatzis writes extensively about contemporary music and society. His most recent writing — Time, Consciousness and Revelation: An Autobiography of Stories, Confessions, Beliefs, Thoughts and Music — is in the final stages of completion.

Michael Oesterle

Montréal composer Michael Oesterle's compositions have been performed and commissioned by numerous notable ensembles and soloists including Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt), Aventa, Turning Point, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Ensemble contemporain de Montréal, the Ives Ensemble (Amsterdam), Ensemble Intercontemporain (Paris), sopranos Karina Gauvin and Suzie LeBlanc, cellist Yegor Dyachkov, violinists Aisslinn Nosky and Karl Stobbe, Quatuor Bozzini, Quatuor Molinari, Groundswell, Soundstreams, Asko/Schoenberg Ensemble (Amsterdam), Les Violons du Roy, the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, and les Percussions de Strasbourg.

He has produced projects in collaboration with choreographers Serge Bennathan, Isabelle Van Grimde, Barbara Bourget, Gioconda Barbuto, and Dominique Porte, and he frequently collaborates with animation artist Christopher Hinton, having composed music for several of his films, including CNOTE, which won the 2005 Genie award for best animated short.

His orchestral works have been commissioned by the Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary, Victoria, Kitchener-Waterloo, and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestras, as well as by the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the National Broadcast Orchestra, Symphony Nova Scotia, the Chicago Civic Orchestra, and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra.

In 1997 he founded the Montréal based Ensemble KORE, and between 2001 and 2004 he was composer-in-residence with l'Orchestre Metropolitain du Grand Montréal. Oesterle was recently appointed composer-in-residence with the Victoria Symphony orchestra.

José Evangelista

José Evangelista pursues an artistic path by which he has explored ways of making a music based exclusively on melody. Hence, he has developed a heterophonic writing, both for instruments and orchestra, in which the melodic line generates echoes of itself and creates an illusion of polyphony. His music draws its roots from an enlarged vision of tradition: to his Spanish origins he has added the influences of the Indonesian gamelan, the Western avant-garde and modal music.

Evangelista was born in Valencia, Spain, in 1943. He began his musical studies with Vicente Asencio while simultaneously studying physics. Later work in computers led him to Canada. Settling in Montréal in 1970, he studied composition with André Prévost and Bruce Mather. From 1979 to 2009 he was a professor at the University of Montréal, where he created the Balinese Gamelan Workshop in 1987. He has been a founding member of several concert societies, has received a number of awards, and commissions from, among others, Itinéraire (Paris), the Kronos Quartet, the Groupe vocal de France, SMCQ and the CBC. His works have been performed in Canada, the US, Europe, Asia and Australia by groups such as Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt), the Nieuw Ensemble (Amsterdam), Music Projects (London), the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio-France, the Montréal Symphony Orchestra, I Musici de Montréal, Esprit Orchestra and the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (Montréal). Between 1993 and 1995 he was composer-in-residence with the Montréal Symphony Orchestra. He has premiered two operas: Exercices de conversation (Lyon 2000, libretto by Eugène Ionesco) and Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse (Montréal 2001, libretto by Alexis Nouss after Jan Potocki). Recent compositions include a concerto for the Montreal cellist, Velitchka Yotcheva, and a piece for guitarist David Russell. He is also writing a book on heterophony.

Sonata in D Minor, .Op. 5 No. 12, 'La folia'
Arcangelo Corelli

Corelli's reputation and influence extended through much of Europe. He was one of the leading violin soloists of the baroque era, as well as a composer of music that is both appealing and historically significant. His sonatas for violin, for example, helped establish this instrument as the most important non-vocal element in music.

La folia (The Folly) is a type of wild Spanish or Portuguese folk dance. One particular melody used for it attained wide popular currency, beginning in the sixteenth century and extending through the eighteenth. Numerous composers have used it as the theme upon which to base sets of variations, including Vivaldi, Frescobaldi, Lully, Pergolesi, Geminiani, Bach, Grétry, Cherubini, Liszt, Nielsen, Rachmaninoff, and Henze. The best-known is Corelli's, a dazzling single movement which makes up the last of the 12 sonatas for violin and continuo that he published in 1700 as Op. 5.

Zeitgeist (spirit of the age)
Christos Hatzis

The composer has written
the following note about this work:

Zeitgeist (spirit of the age) is a personal reflection on the character of the arts today, music in particular. It is the result of an ongoing interest in cultural diversity and historical discontinuity, which are discernible characteristics of most of my work. By "historical discontinuity" I mean the approach to history whereby the artistic products of various eras are not viewed as successive links in a sequential chain but, rather, as the pieces of a comprehensive puzzle, all of which are ever-present and functional in a timeless, multidimensional present. In this sense, Zeitgeist is a postmodern work: musical experiences from the past are taken out of their specific historical context and are assembled and juxtaposed in a way which re-establishes them as viable artistic experiences for here and now.

Formally the work is based on two short motives: the three-note motif which first appears unassumingly at measure 20 as the conclusion of an upwards moving gesture, and the 'French Overture' motif (dotted eighth-note followed by a sixteenth-note) which is pervasive in the baroque-like music of the opening. The two motives combine into a larger five-note idea which appears almost ceaselessly throughout the work in various guises, from Shostakovich-like polyphony to takeoffs on disco music of the mid/late seventies, and everything in between. This limited and clearly delineated structural framework helps to counterbalance the eclectic — and seemingly indiscriminate — exuberance of this work, and builds some creative tension between the audible surface and its internal architecture.

Food for thought as all this may be, I sincerely hope that the piece is enticing and meaningful to the musically less gluttonous audiences of today, who are becoming increasingly adverse to cultural spoon-feeding by the 'serious music' establishment. Zeitgeist would have not been true to its name had it failed in its effort to provide a balanced, low-calorie alternative to our information-saturated perceptual mechanisms. I believe that, ultimately, a work of art is in resonance with the spirit of its age when it fulfills some indefinable, yet widely agreed upon condition of relevance. I also believe that this condition is often divorced from contemporary prescriptions of 'greatness,' be it complexity, simplicity, old-sounding, new-sounding, and/or other recipes which come and go with time.

Zeitgeist was premiered in two locations on the same day: 22 May 1999, in Athens, Greece (Camerata Orchestra, Alexander Myrat, conducting) and Kitchener, Ontario (Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Noel Edison conducting).

Concerto for Two Cellos in G Minor, RV 531
Antonio Vivaldi

Vivaldi's busy and productive career as composer, violinist and teacher drew its due share of acclaim. In his General History of Music (1776-89), British musicologist Charles Burney wrote, "The most popular composer for the violin, as well as player on that instrument, during these times was Don Antonio Vivaldi … maestro di capella of the Conservatorio della Pietà in Venice." The Pietà was a foundling home for young women, where Vivaldi taught music for many years.

He played a major role in several significant musical developments, the rise of the concerto above all. His 500-plus concertos — he holds the record for the highest number, by a large margin — feature a wide variety of soloists. As you would expect, the lion's share of more than 200 focus on the violin.

His reputation suffered a severe lapse following his death. His music's return to widespread currency dates only from the years following the Second World War. It returned to favour after two centuries of neglect thanks to the recording industry and the rise in popularity of the chamber orchestra.

This is one of the most sombre of all Vivaldi's concertos. It remains firmly rooted in the minor mode throughout all three movements. He treated the soloists as equals, at times performing together, and engaging in dialogue at other moments. The vigorous but stern outer movements frame the eloquent sorrow of the slow second.

Kaluza Klein, for vibraphone and string orchestra
Michael Oesterle

The composer has written
the following note:

Years ago someone told me that John Cage hated the vibraphone. Although I doubt this is true, it sparked my interest. How could anyone have a grudge against, what is to me, one of the most elegant instruments around? Among all the wonderful music written for it, I am especially fond of the many transcriptions of Bach for vibraphone — how well his baroque elegance resonates on this marvellous instrument.

Elegance to me implies a geometrical solution that elicits an immediate if inarticulable response to the inevitability of proportion. It is the holy grail. In this context I can think of nothing more elegant than physics. I like to write my music in its reflected atmosphere, to find tales of the endeavours of great scientists and, while I write, to exist, at least for a little while, in this world of exploration, discovery and elegant solutions. Conveniently, this is also one of the over-riding features of the baroque age of physics which included Galileo, Kepler and Tycho Brahe, all of whom have played that role of elegant inspiration for me in the past.

For this piece, I came across the more recent partnership of Kaluza and Klein. Mathematician Theodor Kaluza proposed the fifth dimension in 1921, but it was not until 1926 that Oskar Klein provided a credible geometry for this dimension. It was an elegant solution and as such was referenced by other scientists, including Einstein. The general consensus today is that it does not fit within the now widely accepted model of super-symmetry, but the possibilities opened up by a fifth dimension continue to lure physicists and mathematicians and the Kaluza-Klein theory remains a byword for elegance in physics and math.

Incidentally, Oskar Klein's idea of a compact curled dimension became central to the emergence of String Theory, an idea which is itself still to be proven. Nonetheless, one simply cannot deny the elegance of strings.

Kaluza Klein was commissioned by the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra for Evelyn Glennie, with the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Concerto con brio (Concerto with brilliance)
José Evangelista

Concerto con brio was commissioned by Quatuor Claudel. It was composed in 2003 and premiered in Montréal on 9 February 2004 by Quatuor Claudel & Sinfonia Lanaudière under Stéphane Laforest. The composer has provided the following note:

This concerto-like work for string quartet and string orchestra was inspired by the music of Vivaldi. I have always admired, among other things, this grand master's capacity to create music that is totally immediate, filled with energy and imagination, yet completely at the service of its rather restrained melodic and harmonic materials, often with a disarming simplicity. In this piece, I have tried to capture that spirit — hence the title. It follows classical models and the movements are called Direct, Mélismatique and Presto. The first alternates an orchestral ritornello and a rhythmic theme for the soloists. The second has the spirit of an improvisation. The third presents very simple instrumental motives which give it the character of a perpetual motion.

Flute Concerto in G Major, H. 445/Wq169
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

C.P.E. Bach and his younger half-brother, Johann Christian, were the most talented and the most famous offspring of Johann Sebastian Bach. Carl's expressive and richly-crafted music won the admiration of many illustrious musicians, including Haydn and Mozart, while Beethoven believed that his works "should be in the possession of every true artist, not only for the sake of real enjoyment but also for the purpose of study." Naturally, his principal teacher was his father. He probably studied with his godfather, Georg Philipp Telemann, as well.

He spent the years 1740 to 1768 as resident harpsichordist to the Berlin court of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia. He wasn't altogether happy there, feeling that the monarch never adequately acknowledged his abilities, personally or financially.

Frederick, a fine amateur musician, had a particular gift for playing the flute. Concerts were held at court several times per week, with flute music front and centre. He himself composed more than 100 sonatas for flute, while Johann Joachim Quantz, one of his official court composers and his personal flute instructor, wrote more than 300 flute concertos and 200 sonatas. This was truly a golden age for the flute, as its superior dynamic range and expanded variety of colours were increasingly casting its predecessor, the recorder, into the shade.

Bach, too, composed flute concertos, five in all. They appear to be transcriptions of earlier concertos for harpsichord. They require fully professional performing skills, which may have ruled out King Frederick's playing them. He may not have cared for their advanced style, either, his taste favouring tradition over innovation. Quantz, a quite gifted performer, may have played some of them instead.

Dating from 1755, this Concerto in G Major is likely the last of the series. Bach provided an alternative version with an organ as the solo instrument. The accompanying orchestra is made up of strings alone. The first movement — brisk, genial and expansive — demands considerable agility and virtuosity. The slow second movement communicates pathos and melancholy, emotions instantly banished by the dancing good cheer of the finale.