SKU: HL.50605317
ISBN 9781705177570. UPC: 196288102694. 9.0x12.0 inches.
Pieces of Light was commissioned by the Flautadors for their 20th Anniversary. When the group approached me about writing a piece, I had just finished reading Pieces of Light; The New Science of Memory by Charles Fernyhough, and it struck me that a work inspired by memories and how they are created in our brains would be very appropriate for a group of musicians celebrating such a wonderful milestone. A quote by Nabokov in particular provided ideas for both the rapid, rhythmic music that starts and ends the piece and the slow, 'light-filled' chords of the middle section: [In Nabokov's autobiography, Speak, Memory, he sees] 'the awakening of consciousness as a series of spaced flashes, with the intervals between them gradually diminishing until bright blocks of perception are formed, affording memory a slippery hold.' In addition, this work has really been shaped by the recorders themselves: before writing, I spent several hours with Ian Wilson (a member of the group) learning about the myriad different types of instrument I could write for. The renaissance instruments particularly appealed due to their fabulous timbre, despite the fact that, due to their open hole design, diatonic music works much better than anything chromatic. I became rather obsessed with the idea of writing chromatic music for diatonic instruments, and so in this piece I use recorders at both modern (A440) and baroque (A415, a semi-tone lower) pitch. This allowed me to write a piece that uses all twelve semitones of the scale throughout, whilst never writing a note for any individual recorder that falls outside its particular diatonic major scale: a compositional device that pleased me greatly!-Cheryl Frances-Hoad, 2019.
SKU: FG.55011-372-5
ISBN 9790550113725.
Images of the sea figure prominently throughout my life and memories: from holidays on the Atlantic coast during my Canadian childhood to my current Baltic home, and the imagined, only later experienced Mediterranean of my ancestral heritage. As an immigrant (son of an immigrant) bound to two northern countries, the sea is emblematic of my twin homelands, from the expanses of water surrounding them to those separating them. A Mari usque ad Mare. The sea is also an enduring image of the unknown, of expanses unexplored, of the raw power of nature and, for too many currently, of terror holding a hope of refuge - or the pain of loss. Such disparate ideas were captured for me in the seascapes of the New York painter MaryBeth Thielhelm, whom I met in 2008 during a residency on the Gulf of Mexico. Her vast, abstract, nearly monochromatic depictions of imaginary seas in wildly varying moods were the catalyst for a concerto where the piano is frequently far from a hero battling a collective, but rather acts as a channel for elemental forces surging up from the orchestra, floating - sometimes barely so - on its constantly shifting surface. There are few themes to speak of, beyond a handful of iconic ideas that periodically cycle upward. Rather, the piano's material is largely an ornamentation of the more primal rhythmic and harmonic impulses from the orchestra below - a poetic interpretation, if you will, of the more immediate experience of facing the vastness of some unknown body of water. The title Nameless Seas is borrowed from one of Thielhelm's exhibitions, as are those of the four movements, which are bridged together into two halves of roughly equal weight - one rhapsodic and free, the other more single-minded and direct, separated only by a short breath. The opening movement, Nocturne, is predominantly calm, if brooding, darkness and light alternating throughout. Lyrical arabesques sparkle over gently lapping cross-currents in the strings and mirrored timpani, the piano's full power only rarely deployed. The waves gradually build, drawing in the full orchestra for a meeting of forces in Land and Sea, a brighter, more warmly lyrical scene that unfolds in series of dreamlike, sometimes even nostalgic visions, which for me carry strong memories of sitting on rocks above surging Atlantic waves. The third movement, Wake, is a fast, perpetual-motion texture of glinting, darting rhythms and sudden shafts of light, with a prominent part for the steel drums, limning the piano's quicksilver figurations. An ecstatic climax crashes into a solo cadenza that grows progressively calmer and more introspective rather than virtuosic. Much of the tension finally releases into Unclaimed Waters, a drifting, meditative seascape in which the piano is progressively engulfed by a series of ever-taller waves, ultimately dissolving into a tolling, rippling continuum of sound. It has been a great privilege to realize such a long-held dream as this piece, and to write it for not one, but two great pianists. Risto-Matti Marin and Angela Hewitt, both of whose friendship and support have been unfailing and humbling, share the dedication. Nameless Seas was commissioned by the PianoEspoo festival and Canada's National Arts Centre, with the premieres in Ottawa and Helsinki led by Hannu Lintu and Olari Elts. Thanks are due also to the Jenny and Antti Wihuri fund, whose generous grant provided me with much-needed time, and Escape to Create in Seaside, Florida, the source to which I returned to do a large part of the work.
SKU: HL.14018511
The three-movement Quo vadis by Erik Bergman is a typical example of his recent coloristic-improvisatory style. It is a dialogue-like duo in which the instruments speak both in turn and together. Their voices grow in a wedge of volume - from silence to passionate outbursts and from the middle to the outer registers. Each rejoinder is usually dominated by a particular mode of playing and figure, the most marked being the highly dissonant crashes on the piano and the cello tremoli. The themes of the second movement are based on a medieval Dies irae melody. But their melodic type, oscillating backwards and forwards over a small interval, is characteristic of Bergman and accordingly makes its appearance in the other movements, too.
