CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Martin Grubinger
Per Rundberg

Weill Recital Hall
Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 7:30 PM

Martin Grubinger, Percussion
Per Rundberg, Piano

ANDERS KOPPEL Marimba Concerto No. 3
MARTIN GRUBINGER Aus dem Leben einer Trommel
KEIKO ABE Prism Rhapsody
EVELYN GLENNIE A Little Prayer
ANDERS KOPPEL Toccata
IANNIS XENAKIS Rebonds B
MINORU MIKI Marimba Spiritual

Rising Stars is a project of the European Concert Hall Organization (ECHO), supported by the European Commission. For this series, the directors of Europe’s most important concert halls and Carnegie Hall—the only non-European member of ECHO—nominate young soloists or ensembles from their own countries to appear in other ECHO halls. Rising Stars nominees appear at Carnegie Hall in the Distinctive Debuts series in Weill Recital Hall.

Martin Grubinger and Per Rundberg were nominated by the Konzerthaus and Musikverein (Vienna).

The Distinctive Debuts series is made possible, in part, by an endowment fund for the presentation of young artists generously provided by The Lizabeth and Frank Newman Charitable Foundation.

Additional endowment support for international outreach has been provided by the Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation.

This concert is made possible, in part, by The Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation.

Program Notes:

By Susan Halpern

ANDERS KOPPEL Marimba Concerto No. 3
Born 1947 in Copenhagen.

Tonight’s performance marks the Carnegie Hall premiere of Koppel’s Marimba Concerto No. 3, composed in 2002–03.

Koppel grew up in a musical family; his father Herman D. Koppel (1908–1998) was one of the most significant Danish composers and pianists of his generation. The young Koppel was classically trained as a clarinetist, pianist, and organist, but from 1967 until 1974, worked with experimental rock music and, with his brother, co-founded the rock group Savage Rose in 1967. Since 1976, he has been a member of the trio Bazaar, with whom he has played Balkan-inspired music. He now plays in the trio Koppel-Andersen-Koppel, with his son, saxophone player Benjamin Koppel. Koppel has composed music for ballets, movies, theatrical plays, and musicals, as well as for classical ensembles and chamber music. He has composed four marimba concertos, which were commissions for particular performers.

Concerto No. 3 for Marimba and Orchestra was composed in 2002–03 for the Austrian marimba virtuoso Martin Grubinger. The work has great symphonic breadth and is characterized by rhythmic energy. It also contains a strong organic unity based on its structure, much influenced by traditional classical formal constraints.


MARTIN GRUBINGER Aus dem Leben einer Trommel
Born 1983 in Salzburg.

Grubinger’s Aus dem Leben einer Trommel was first performed in 2005 at Vienna’s Musikverein by the composer. Tonight’s performance of Aus dem Leben einer Trommel marks the Carnegie Hall premiere of this work.

Austrian percussionist Martin Grubinger joined the Austrian Philharmonic Youth Orchestra when he was only eight years old. At 16, he was the youngest finalist of the Second World Marimba Competition in Okaya, Japan, as well as finalist of the EBU Competition in Norway.
Since then, the young composer-percussionist has gained international fame, playing concert tours throughout the world.

Grubinger has remarked that his work, Aus dem Leben einer Trommel, which is a work in process, involves a dialogue between the listener and the composer-performer because “the listener should get the chance to decide which rhythms suit with the different stages of his life.” He predicts that the piece may sound completely different in 10 years’ time, as his “own experience about life and society” evolves.

Grubinger defines one main musical concept that he used to organize the work, and he says that it “is to play on different snare drums—each drum marks a phase of one’s life.” He asks his auditors to be interactive: “the listener has the possibility to assign the selected snare sounds and rhythms to each phase of life.” In effect, Grubinger is trying in his music to deliver an universal message, and he hopes that his piece will “be seen as a statement for humanism, civil rights, and liberty.”

The title of Grubinger’s piece, Aus dem Leben einer Trommel (“Memoirs of a Drum”), alludes to Joseph Eichendorff’s famous novel Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts (“Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing”).


GRAHAM LACK Wondrous Machine
Born August 18, 1954, in Epsom, Surrey, England.

Tonight’s performance of Wonderous Machine marks the Carnegie Hall premiere of this work.

Lack began to compose choral pieces as a child, and at the age of 18 became the conductor of his local choir. He first studied music at Bishop Otter College in Chichester. Later he went on to study composition at Goldsmiths College at the University of London, and then at King’s College University of London. He also studied at the Technische Universität in Berlin, devising a morphology of spectral music and tracing the influences of this method on contemporary Finnish composers. He lectured on music at the University of Maryland’s Munich campus and has chaired several symposiums on the music of our time at Oxford University’s Goethe Institute.

Wondrous Machine, which receives its premiere tonight, includes special instruments: a wind harp (modified from an alto zither) and a singing bowl (sounded when a brass sphere is made to roll around the inner surface). Lack has written about the his new work:

The universe is a wondrous and giant ticking machine. Within this virtual contraption, cogs turn and drive others forward. This notion is not new—it was prevalent in Europe in the 17th century during the age of great astronomical discovery—but it seemed an apposite point of departure for a new work scored for piano and percussion.

As in much music calling for membranophones and struck idiophones, rhythm plays a key role in the separation of timbres. But it was not the driving kind of rhythm that interested me; I became increasingly fascinated with the cross-rhythms that emerge when various tempos are superimposed. This compositional technique provided me with material that I then took over into the piano part. What emerges is a subtle interplay of shades and colors … fragments and remains.

At a thematic level, the repeated note in the opening passage serves as a highly extenuated pedal point, one that appears at other pitches throughout the work and which later is transformed from a distinct pitch height to noise itself. The noise-sound-pitch-music paradigm ubiquitous to much electronic music of the mid-20th century has turned out to be a prevailing influence in many an orchestral work today, and this tendency afforded me a second compositional thrust. This should be self-explanatory upon hearing the very first note—or gesture in this case.

The piano part and percussion lines remain tightly interlocked for the duration of the piece, but do drift apart from time to time in order to engage new musical material that takes the form of ideas won from this constant dialogue. Toward the close there is a short cadenza in which the piano part is fully notated, but the percussionist is left to improvise on the initial triplet-quadruplet rhythms. The ending itself calls for two specially constructed percussion instruments to be set in motion, against which a piano pitch higher than the opening one can only be sensed as still ticking away.


IANNIS XENAKIS Psappha
Born May 29, 1922, in Braïla, Romania; died February 4, 2001, in England.

Composed in 1975, Xenakis’s Psappha received its Carnegie Hall premiere in Weill Recital Hall on June 17, 1987, with Dominic Donato, percussion.

“Psappha” is an archaic form of “Sappho,” a great Greek poetess from the Island of Lesbos, who was born around 600 BCE. Sappho, one of the first to use the first person, wrote sensual melodic verse that describes how love and loss personally touched her. Her love of females led to both her name and that of the island of Lesbos to signify the love of one woman for another.
Written in 1975 for six groups of instruments, three of wood and skins and three of metal, embracing sharp, violent sounds, Xenakis’s work does not seem directly to refer to Sappho’s poetry. Musicologists, however, have found that the symbolic referent resides in its small rhythmic cells that resemble the rhythms of Sappho’s poetry. Xenakis writes, “timbre serves only to clarify the rhythmic structures.” As the piece progresses, one texture replaces another.
As a child, Xenakis was sent to boarding school on the Greek island of Spetsai. He studied civil engineering at the Athens Polytechnic, but after the German invasion and the British occupation, he joined the Resistance, was severely wounded, and later condemned to death. Fleeing to Paris desiring to study music, he instead became an engineering assistant for Le Corbusier; but Messiaen, recognizing his originality, encouraged him, and with the composer’s help, by 1960, Xenakis was able to compose full time.

Xenakis’s music is not aligned with any contemporary school; instead, his background in mathematics, engineering and design, and his affinity for complex sonic phenomena dictate his compositional approach and his focus on texture as his primary material. He composed acoustic works, electro-acoustic pieces, and multimedia creations involving sound, light, movement, and architecture. In the domain of computer music, he was a pioneer in the area of algorithmic composition.

He was awarded the Kyoto Prize in 1997, the UNESCO International Music Prize in 1998, and the Polar Prize (Sweden) in 1999.


ANDERS KOPPEL Toccata
Tonight’s performance of marks the Carnegie Hall premiere of Toccata, composed in 1990.

The outgoing and good-naturedly playful Toccata was commissioned by the Safri Du and was composed in late 1990. It takes the form of a rondo, and begins with a fanfare and a statement of the main theme, after which the music celebrates dance. A powerful tango is followed by a waltz-like section. After a pause, a slow melody gives way to tango again, and progresses to its climax with a fugue. Throughout the central portion of this dramatic work, an intense rhythmic drive predominates. Before the coda, the marimba has a demanding cadenza, and the main theme returns at the end.

IANNIS XENAKIS Rebonds B
Rebonds B received its Carnegie Hall premiere on October 8, 2001, in Weill Recital Hall with Dimitris Dessylas, percussion.

Rebonds (“Rebounds”), composed in 1989, was Xenakis’s second work for solo percussionist. Very different from his first, it extended the boundaries of what he defined as music. In Rebonds, a homogeneous collection of drums and woodblocks are played with a consistent pulse, and rhythmic power is the central element of this work. Contrasting timbres form the motivic material in place of themes or subjects. Rebonds has two sections of about the same length. Labeled A and B, the sections can be performed in any order or independently; both demand equal virtuosity and control. In Rebonds B, the soloist plays multiple instruments: bongos, tom-toms, bass drums, and a set of woodblocks.

Rebonds B depends on texture and is based on two-part drumming with frequent monophonic interruptions. Stephen Schick comments, “the increasingly frequent and potent monophonic interpolations mount an attack sufficient to atomize the original material. The piece becomes a centrifuge, flinging fragments of the opening complex into extreme associations with the now-dominant monophonic music.” Woodblocks outline contrasting sections of the whole. Growing complicated figures drive the work to its end with a virtuosic display of all the instruments.


KEIKO ABE Prism Rhapsody
Born April 18, 1937, in Tokyo.

Abe’s Prism Rhapsody was first performed on July 26, 1995, in Hamamatsu, Japan, by the composer at the marimba and the Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra conducted by Timothy Reynish. It received its Carnegie Hall premiere in Weill Recital Hall on April 20, 1994, with Joseph Gramley, marimba.

Abe is both a composer and marimba player who has helped expand the marimba’s technique and repertoire and has collaborated with Yamaha to develop a five-octave concert marimba. At age 12, after hearing an American missionary group from Oral Roberts University playing the first marimba ever brought to Japan, Abe began studying the instrument. While at Tokyo Gakugei University, she formed a marimba trio to play popular music; she soon felt constrained by the limited scope of the ensemble and in 1962 shifted her focus to contemporary classical music, playing mallet percussion with the NHK orchestra.

On her own show on Japanese television, she taught children how to play xylophone, and she hosted a radio show called Good Morning Marimba. Since 1969, she has taught at the Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo. The first woman to be inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame in 1993, she also developed the six-mallet technique. Her compositions, many of which began as improvisations, have joined the marimba repertoire.

In 1963, Yamaha began a search for Japanese marimba players to help design new instruments. She was chosen for her clear ideas of marimba sound and design, and at her urging, the range of the marimba was extended to five octaves, now the standard for soloists. Yamaha gave its first signature series of keyboard percussion mallets her name.

Prism Rhapsody is a virtuoso marimba work with a free spirit that does not follow traditional concerto structure, rather more like a modern virtuoso equivalent of the works of Liszt or Paganini. Its theme occurs in various places throughout, symbolically as experienced through a prism. Two sections linked by a cadenza frame this rhapsodic piece. In the first half, the fragments of two different themes are expanded, and they join to make a single subject. In the last half, after the cadenza, a quick passage exploits the unique characteristics of marimba supported by the ostinato rhythm of the accompaniment.


MINORU MIKI Marimba Spiritual
Born 1930 in Tokushima, Japan.

Composed in 1983–84, Marimba Spiritual was first performed on March 18, 1984, in Amsterdam by the composer at the marimba and the Nieuwe Slagwek Groep Amsterdam. It received its Carnegie Hall premiere on April 20, 1994, in Weill Recital Hall with Joseph Gramley, marimba; and David Rozenblatt, Mark Suter, and Alberto Lopez, percussion.

Miki studied composition at Tokyo National University of Music, after which, in 1964, he founded Pro Musica Nipponia, an unusual ensemble consisting of various Japanese traditional instruments. Serving as its artistic director for two decades, he aimed to widen international knowledge of traditional Japanese instruments. He also invented a 20 (and then 21) string koto. He composed Kyu-no-Kyoku (“Symphony for Two Worlds”), commissioned by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra for its bicentennial celebration, which premiered in 1981 under the baton of Kurt Masur, to complete his Eurasian Trilogy, linking Japanese instruments with a symphony orchestra.

Miki received a request from Keiko Abe to compose a marimba piece for three percussionists and began the piece on December 25, 1983, completing it on January 13, 1984. This work is linked to events occurring at the time of its composition. People were dying of starvation in Africa, and since Miki had had suffered similarly after World War II, he felt strongly that he should express his sympathy and anger about the African famine. The first slow section is intended as a “static requiem” and the second faster and strongly rhythmic section as a “spirited resurrection.” The first part has two sections, the first of which delegates the rhythmic and thematic interest to the marimba, which returns frequently to the opening motif. Although Miki has been asked if he consciously combined a number of different scales in the first section, he attests that he had no model in mind when he composed Marimba Spiritual; rather he allowed his imagination to run free over the harmonic and melodic material. In the second section, the marimba cedes some of the limelight, providing intermittent declarations and supporting harmonies. The second half of the work features changing rhythmic patterns, inspired by the traditional style of drumming of the Chichibu area northwest of Tokyo. At the end, the marimba engages in a varied recapitulation and brings the work to an exciting conclusion.

Copyright © 2007 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Susan Halpern contributes program notes to numerous musical organizations.

Martin Grubinger, Percussion
The Austrian multi-percussionist Martin Grubinger has garnered attention from his youth, appearing at several international competitions. He was, for example, the youngest finalist at the second World Marimbaphone Competition held in Okaya, Japan, and a finalist at the EBU Competition in Norway.

Mr. Grubinger’s repertoire is unusually broad. At the renowned Beethovenfest in Bonn in September 2006, he presented a major project, “The Percussive Planet,” one that impressed critics and audience alike. Another highlight was his November 2006 performance at the Musikverein in Vienna with the RSO Wien under John Axelrod; he performed six percussion concertos, two of which had been especially composed for him—by Rolf Wallin and Anders Koppel.

Born in 1983 in Salzburg, Mr. Grubinger studied at the Bruckner-Konservatorium in Linz and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. He soon appeared throughout Europe, giving recitals and orchestral concerts in renowned venues such as Vienna Musikverein, Hamburg Laeiszhalle, Berlin Konzerthaus, and Baden-Baden Festspielhaus, and playing at well established festivals like the Bregenz Festival. Other high points in his career to date include a tour with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra under Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and appearances with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra.

In summer 2007 Mr. Grubinger received the Bernstein Award at the Schleswig Holstein Music Festival, having just given a recital there with Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire, moderated by Christoph Eschenbach. An invitation immediately followed for a tour with the Festival Orchestra under Eschenbach in summer 2008.

For the 2007–08 season Mr. Grubinger was nominated by the Vienna Konzerthaus for a renowned performance series, Rising Stars, in which he appears as soloist at some of the world’s most famous concert halls, including the Philharmonie Cologne, Philharmonie Luxemburg, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Palais des Beaux Arts Brussels, Stockholm Konserthuset, Birmingham Concert Hall, Athens Megaron, and Carnegie Hall.

In addition, engagements are planned with the Münchner Philharmoniker, Hamburger Philharmoniker, Frankfurt Radio, Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg, and Sinfonieorchester Luzern, as well as an appearance at the Brass and Percussion Festival in the renowned Suntory Hall in Tokyo. Mr. Grubinger will be artist-in-residence at the Gewandhaus Leipzig, where he will present seven projects.

Contemporary composers such as Anders Koppel, Avner Dorman, and Bruno Hartl have written works for Martin Grubinger. HK Gruber was recently commissioned to write a piece to be premiered in spring 2009 with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig under the baton of the composer.

Per Rundberg, Piano
Per Rundberg, born in Skelleftea, Sweden, studied with Björn Ejdemo, Staffan Scheja, and Gunnar Hallhagen in his native country before attending the Yehudi Menuhin School (England) at the age of 15, where he continued his studies with Seta Tanyel. Later studies in Salzburg at the Mozarteum (with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, resulting in a diploma with honors), Paris, Budapest, and Stockholm, as well as lessons with Murray Perahia completed his education.

Mr. Rundberg frequently gives concerts all over Europe and in the US. He has performed at major halls including the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Konzerthaus (Vienna), and Konserthuset and Berwaldhallen (Stockholm), and as a soloist with such orchestras as the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Camerata Salzburg, Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg, Morávska Filharmonie (Czech Republic), and Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra (Finland), among others. He is often invited to play at major festivals like Schleswig-Holstein, the Salzburg Festival, Feldkirch Festival, and Festival di Pasqua in Rome. Mr. Rundberg has recorded CDs on various labels like Accent Music, Polymnia Records, and KC Classics. A current collaboration with Deutschland Radio, Cologne, features Roman piano music from the 17th century until today. Dedicated to contemporary music, Mr. Rundberg has given many world premiere performances; he has worked with the most prominent composers of our time, including George Crumb, Franco Donatoni, Beat Furrer, Giya Kanchela, and Arvo Pärt.