CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
American Composers Orchestra

Zankel Hall
Friday, May 1st, 2009 at 7:30 PM

American Composers Orchestra’s pioneering conductor laureate Dennis Russell Davies returns for a gathering of friends, old and new. Highlights include a new concerto by the ACO Artistic Director Robert Beaser and the “consistently fresh, inventive, surprising” (Fanfare) Lukas Ligeti, who melds electronic wizardry, jazz improvisation, European modernism, and world music rhythms in his American orchestral debut on his marimba synthesizer.

American Composers Orchestra
Dennis Russell Davies, Conductor
Eliot Fisk, Guitar
Thomas Larcher, Piano
Lukas Ligeti, Marimba Lumina

LUKAS LIGETI Labyrinth of Clouds (World Premiere)
DEREK BERMEL a shout, a whisper, and a trace (World Premiere)

THOMAS LARCHER Böse Zellen (Malignant Cells) for piano and orchestra (US Premiere)
ROBERT BEASER Guitar Concerto (NY Premiere)

Program Notes:

LUKAS LIGETI
Labyrinth of Clouds
Labyrinth of Clouds is a concerto for Marimba Lumina and orchestra. The Marimba Lumina is a very unusual electronic marimba, designed by the engineer Don Buchla. This is my first time playing as soloist with an orchestra, about which I’m very excited; it will also be a contribution to the very small repertoire of concertos for orchestra with an electronic solo instrument. Mixing electronics and orchestra is a great challenge, and my piece examines various contrasts between and juxtapositions of these two sound worlds.

My music is strongly informed both by the Western classical canon and by the traditional and popular musics of Africa, a continent where the marimba plays a prominent role. This has greatly influenced my approach to the instrument, and, likewise, my Marimba Lumina concerto contrasts and juxtaposes these cultural worlds in various ways. As an instrumentalist, I am essentially an improvising musician; the solo part in Labyrinth of Clouds includes space for improvisation and showcases some of the unique possibilities of this rare instrument. In combination with the sonic palette of the orchestra, the result is a maze of swirling, polymetric patterns and melodies coming in and out of phase and focus, with changes of timbre and color guiding the way through a myriad of listening experiences.

—Lukas Ligeti


DEREK BERMEL
A Shout, a Whisper, a Trace
During the last five years of his life, the composer Béla Bartók lived in New York. He didn’t know it at the time, but his departure from Hungary in October 1940 was the last time he would see his native Budapest.

As he approached the age of 60, in ill health and preoccupied with the destruction of his beloved native country by the Nazis, he attempted to adapt to this new, unfamiliar surroundings. He greatly enjoyed compiling and cataloging a collection of Serbo-Croatian “women’s songs” at Columbia University’s library. He wandered the streets of Queens, got lost in the subways, wrote home in halting English to his colleagues and friends like Szigeti and Kodály, who remained in Budapest. He once spent three hours in the subway, “traveling hither and thither in the earth; finally, our time waning and our mission incomplete, we shamefacedly slunk home—of course, entirely underground.”

In rereading Bartók’s letters, I reflected on my own experiences living in other countries and cultures, and I began to muse on the curious and intensely ironic situation of his life during these last years. So many immigrants have come to my native city—New York—brimming with the hopes, fears, and yearnings associated with exile. These revenants are all around, present and enduring, as much a part of the city as the buildings and rivers around us.

—Derek Bermel


THOMAS LARCHER (b. 1953)
Böse Zellen (Malignant Cells)
In 2004 I was commissioned to write a piano concerto for the same orchestration as Mozart’s Concerto in E-flat Major, K. 482. It should have been a piece that—like the Mozart—could be performed without a conductor. However, I got stuck with this line very soon. It was Dennis Russell Davies, to whom the piece is dedicated, who encouraged me “to write a piece first and then to think whether a conductor would be needed.” This process led me to investigate my rhythmic sources once again: fast tempos, vivid interaction between the players, and a rhythmic complexity almost beyond the edge for such a big ensemble.

The piano is prepared—with rubbers at the beginning of the strings and with tape on the strings in the upper regions. This is because I wanted to have a clearly defined, percussion-like layer to be played by the soloist. Towards the end of the piece, however, the piano is liberated from the preparations and finds its way back to its natural sound and to its stylistic sources. The moments when this happens can be clearly heard and seen. This gives the piece a very clear line and dramaturgy. It is as if the soloist tries in vain to get out of being trapped in a manic, claustrophobic situation, and only in the end, being exhausted from the effort, finds a creative way of liberating itself.

It is the old story of a cage with a door leading into a bigger cage, as has been described by Italo Svevo, Kobo Abe (The Woman in the Dunes), and many others, and in this way it is an archetypal drama. It is a drama, however, in which the “hero,” the main person, has a strong counterpart in the orchestra, which works both with him and against him, projecting the pictures into a far bigger scale, etc. Sometimes the piano is also only a catalyst for the developments leading to a climax. The whole development starts moving with a special device: a big, heavy steel ball moving back and forth on the piano strings.

The title refers to a film by the Austrian director Barbara Albert. While I was composing the work, this film accompanied me but it did not give my piece a program. Perhaps there are analogies with regard to the construction, the structure, the treatment of form, the openness of the architecture, the juxtaposition of people, impressions, feelings, structures…. The fundamental impression that remains with me is the tracing of “horizontal structures” in life, the depiction of the impossibility of influencing the direction in which life is heading. Contained in the film are many attempts to find directions, to feel out or force perspectives, carefully or vehemently.”

—Thomas Larcher


ROBERT BEASER (b. 1954)
Concerto for Guitar
My Guitar Concerto is written for my dear friend Eliot Fisk, whom I first met in 1972 when we were both freshmen at Yale College. The concerto is cast in a traditional, three-movement form, and I have kept the orchestra lean for a host of practical reasons (including balance and portability). The first movement uses a rich string of minor thirds and weaves them through a series of edgy variants. The guitar literally bursts out of the box, and the orchestra provides the foil.

The second movement, stately and elegiac, turns inward—I call it a tombeau (“tombstone”), as it contains references to Baroque music. There is a hypnotic, meditative theme in 3/4 (which is a departure from the 4/4 Allemande of traditional tombeaux). This is interrupted by the middle section, which turns nightmarish and strange: An incessant modal inflection takes hold and throws the order off balance. It is meant to pay homage to early lute music, and to Ravel—who himself paid homage to Couperin—evoking an earlier style and synthesizing it into a new expressive language.

I am grateful to all the commissioning parties: the Albany Symphony, David Alan Miller, American Composers Orchestra, Dennis Russell Davies, and Brucknerhaus and the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts for providing support for the creation of this new concerto.

—Robert Beaser

American Composers Orchestra
Dennis Russell Davies, Conductor
Dennis Russell Davies, ACO’s founding conductor and Conductor Laureate, is acclaimed as a musician of extraordinary breadth, technical brilliance, and fearless music making, a maverick in his field, yet “one of the few conductors whose unquestioned commitment to music of our age has not severed his connections to the standard repertory.” Highly regarded as a conductor who is at the forefront of both orchestral and operatic worlds, Mr. Davies is also an accomplished pianist and is sought out by orchestras, composers, and fellow musicians worldwide for his inspiring collaborations and interpretive mastery.

A frequent guest conductor with major orchestras and opera companies worldwide, Mr. Davies is Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Bruckner Orchester Linz and Chief Conductor of the Linz Opera. He has most recently been appointed Music Director of the Basel Symphony Orchestra in Basel, Switzerland, effective beginning with the 2009–2010 season. Mr. Davies is also Professor of Orchestral Conducting at the Salzburg Mozarteum and Conductor Laureate of the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra. Additionally, the year 2009 marks 40 years of uninterrupted music directorships of various orchestras both nationally and internationally for Mr. Davies.

In addition to his commitments with the Bruckner Orchester and Opera in the city of Linz, this fall marks Mr. Davies’s first appearance with the Basel Symphony Orchestra as Music Director Designate. He also continues his relationship with the Mozarteum University Orchestra, with which he inaugurates the 1st Salzburger Biennale Festival, which opens in March 2009 and presents music from four continents.

Mr. Davies has served as chief conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, and Beethovenhalle Orchestra, and as music director of the Norwalk Symphony Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Stuttgart State Opera, Bonn Opera, and the Cabrillo Music Festival (Santa Cruz, CA); he was also principal conductor and classical music program director of The Philadelphia Orchestra at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

As both conductor and pianist, Mr. Davies has released more than 60 recordings, earning numerous awards. He was born in Toledo, Ohio, and graduated from The Juilliard School, where he studied piano with Lonny Epstein and Sasha Gorodnitski and conducting with Jean Morel and Jorge Mester.

Eliot Fisk, Guitar
A born risk taker and charismatic virtuoso, Eliot Fisk has brought an entirely new dimension to classical guitar performance. He is known worldwide for his imaginative and innovative approach and for expanding the scope of the classical guitar legacy he inherited from his legendary mentor, Andrés Segovia. Through numerous works written for him by leading composers, Eliot Fisk has created a fresh and exciting modern style all his own.

At the same time, as reflected in his innumerable transcriptions of the great composers of the past (Bach, Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart, Paganini, Mendelssohn, Granados, Albeniz, et al.), he continues to indulge a lifelong love affair with the great tradition of Western art music.

Mr. Fisk continues to actively seek out contemporary composers to expand the guitar repertoire. Among the works dedicated to Mr. Fisk are Luciano Berio’s Sequenza XI, for solo guitar, premiered by Mr. Fisk in 1988; and Chemin V, for guitar and orchestra, premiered in Bonn, Germany, in September 1992 with Mr. Berio conducting the Orchester der Beethoven Halle. This evening marks Fisk’s first performance with ACO.

Thomas Larcher, Piano
Born in Innsbruck in 1963, Thomas Larcher grew up in the Austrian Tyrol. After studying piano and composition in Vienna, he embarked on a career combining composition, performing, teaching, and festival direction. Composing and performing are now his key activities.

Mr. Larcher’s compositions take an immediate hold on the listener. Notable for their confidence and momentum, directness of expression, and quality of invention, his works have been described as occupying “a refreshing middle ground in the contemporary music scene, somewhere between the complexity of the Boulez-Stockhausen avant-garde and the newer wave of simplicity.” Recent and forthcoming compositions include his Cello Concerto Hier, Heute (Lucerne Symphony Orchestra Nott), which includes the pre-recorded voice of a photographer involved in the Iraq War; a piano concerto; a new string quartet, Mandares, for the Artemis Quartet premiered in Salzburg and Cincinnati in 2008; and Die Nacht der Verlorenen for Matthias Goerne and the London Sinfonietta, which premiered at the South Bank Centre London in October 2008. He is currently working on a violin concerto for Isabelle Faust, which receives its premiere in Vienna in March.

As a pianist, Mr. Larcher is a particularly illuminating performer of the music of our time. He also has a special ability to cast new light on the established repertoire, both through his searching interpretation and through programming that reveals links, contrasts, and comparisons in music. His recital discs are often thought-provoking and have earned him many industry awards, including the Preis den Deutschen Schallplattenkritik and the Choc de la Musique.

Thomas Larcher’s music is published exclusively by Schott Music.

Lukas Ligeti, Marimba Lumina
This evening marks Lukas Ligeti’s first composition and performance for ACO. He studied at the Vienna Music University, and, upon completing his studies there, served from 1994 to 1996 as a visiting scholar at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University. Since 1998, he has lived in New York City. Since 2003, he has curated the weekly experimental music series Freezone NY with guitarist Ty Cumbie.

Oblivious to categorizations such as “classical” and “pop,” his main interests include areas such as cultural exchange, polyrhythms/polytempo structures, and non-tempered tunings, and his music ranges from the through-composed to the free-improvised.

As a composer, he has been commissioned by the Vienna Festwochen, Ensemble Modern, Kronos Quartet, American Composers Forum, New York University, ORF Austrian Broadcasting Company, Radio France, and many others. His compositions have been performed by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lyon, London Sinfonietta, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Ensemble die reihe, and others at major festivals worldwide. He has also composed for dance, film, and installation. In June 2004, Tzadik Records released the CD Mystery System, featuring five of Mr. Ligeti’s compositions for chamber ensemble performed by the Amadinda Percussion Group, a world-class percussion ensemble from Hungary; Ethel, New York’s über-hip new string quartet; the great American contemporary music pianist Kathleen Supové; and the French ensemble Procédé Rodesco-Letort.

As a drummer, Mr. Ligeti has performed and/or recorded with such artists as Henry Kaiser, Raoul Björkenheim, Michael Manring, Gianni Gebbia, Daniel Carter, Benoît Delbecq, John Tchicai, Pyrolator Kurt Dahlke, Elliott Sharp, Jim O’Rourke, Robert Dick, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Rupert Huber, and Ned Rothenberg; in addition, he performs solo concerts on electronic percussion.

He is also highly active in cultural exchange. In 1994, commissioned by the Goethe Institute, he conducted a workshop in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, which led to the founding of the experimental, intercultural group Beta Foly; additional trips to Abidjan; additional tours in Europe; and the release of his first CD as a bandleader, Lukas Ligeti & Beta Foly, on Intuition Music in 1997. He has also worked on a project involving the Batonka people of the Lake Kariba area, performing in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and South Africa; collaborated with Nubian musicians in Egypt, including a joint concert at the Cairo Opera; composed a piece for musicians of different Caribbean cultures. which premiered in Miami Beach; and, since 2000, has collaborated with Maï Lingani, a singer from Burkina Faso. Their newest joint project, Burkina Electric, was started in 2004 and combines the traditional music of that country with dance-oriented electronica.