Events

Mishenko’s delicate melodies evoke the fairy-tale music of Iceland. The young composer has admitted his “Icelandic addiction” on numerous occasions: he got his start in writing instrumental music, impressed by the Sigur Rós band, he had used Icelandic chants in his recordings, and he had shared the stage with the well-known Ólafur Arnalds.

Mishenko had just released his two latest LPs at the end of 2015. One is the experimental Metanoia, and the other is called Piano and consists of 20 piano pieces.

«Дать возможность быть услышанным новому поколению композиторов, продолжающих в XXI-м веке богатейшую историю органа - невероятно важно», - говорит куратор фестиваля Organ Reframed, лауреат премии Oram Awards за инновации в музыке Клэр М Сингер (Claire M Singer), - «Как и любой другой инструмент, а может и более прочих, орган заслуживает жизни и новой музыки».

На московской сессии Organ Reframed прозвучат новые сочинения для органа и 18 струнных, специально написанные для английского фестиваля и впервые исполненные в прошлом году. Их авторами стали видные современные композиторы Крейг Армстронг (Craig Armstrong), Катрин Лэмб (Catherine Lamb) и Нико Мьюли (Nico Muhly). Непохожие по авторскому почерку пьесы, каждая из которых представляет свой взгляд на роль органа в современности, исполнит известный органист Джеймс МакВинни (James McVinnie), работавший в Вестминстерском Аббатстве и сотрудничающий с такими музыкантами как Дэвид Лэнг, Брайс Десснер (The National), Рид Перри (Arcade Fire). Струнной группой вечера выступит российский ансамбль “Студия новой музыки” под управлением дирижера London Contemporary Orchestra Роберта Эймса (Robert Ames), принимавшего участие в создании этих произведений. Куратор Organ Reframed Клэр М Сингер лично исполнит в Москве сочинения для органа, виолончели и электроники из своего нового альбома «Solas», заслужившего высокие оценки критики.

ПРОГРАММА ВЕЧЕРА:

This January marked the 95th anniversary of the Dutch composer’s birthday. To celebrate this occasion, on May 23, the Museum of Moscow will host the performance of his principal work Canto Ostinato for four grand pianos, which is both angelically easy to enjoy and devilishly difficult to perform. It will be performed by the piano players who know and love Simeon ten Holt’s music — Europe’s chief ten Holt expert Jeroen Van Veen, Russia’s most prominent scholar of new music and founder of a pianistic school Alexey Lyubimov, and his colleagues Alexey Zuev and Vyacheslav Poprugin, with whom he performs in Europe.

Simeon ten Holt was born in 1923 in Bergen, a coastal town in the northern part of Netherlands. He studied music with the legend of Dutch modernism Jacob van Domselaer, who was friends with Piet Mondrian, and joined the artistic movement De Stijl, known for its ideals of aesthetic sterility, rationality, and vigour. Many of De Stijl’s postulates resonate with Simeon ten Holt’s own style. Travelling a different road that the one taken by the majority of his contemporaries, the Dutch composer rejected the radical avant garde sound, altough for a while he di experiment with group improvisation and electronic sounds. Ten Holt’s element was minimalism in its most purist and “academic” form: his was a repetitive music based on the iterations of sound units, where asceticly simple sound patterns alternate and overlap with each other following a principle reminiscent of genetic blueprints.

The composer’s magnum opus is the Canto Ostinato, written in 1976. The composition’s name can be translated as an “obstinate song.” Ostinato, which in Italian means “obstinate” or “persistent” — is the minimalism’ key technique, which consists of repeating a musical element over and over without any variations or elaboration. While nominally belonging to the so called classical music, Canto Ostinato is just as removed from the symphonies of Tchaikovsky or Beethoven, as Mondrian’s or van Doesburg’s abstract matrices from the paintings of Ivan Aivazovsky. It does not exist as a completed musical text: the number of performers may vary, resulting in the Song, which can last anywhere from an hour and a half to the whole day. Canto Ostinato is a set of more than one hundred short musical modules, which have to be performed in accordance with specific algorithm. The algorithm’s breadth and difficulty can be transformed depending on the number of performers, and four pianos are considered an optimal combination for the performance of Canto Ostinato. The piano players’ collaboration, which simulatenously resembles a game of genetic construction and a four-line racing with constant reconfigurations, give birth to a pulsing and transparent substance of sound, which puts the audience in a trance.

Canto Ostinato is one of the fundamental works of the 20th century academic music that will be presented in Moscow in a master performance. It will be proceded by the performance of four Simeon ten Holt miniatures selected by the piano players themselves.

The SOUND UP festival of new music is launching a new format – the annual piano festival SOUND UP forte that will enable the music lovers to immerse themselves in the boundless universe of this instrument and to get acquainted with the great variety of its faces and voices. The festival will bring together the practitioners of different music genres, such as the academic, electronic, experimental, and even pop music, who treat the instrument’s capabilities in various ways – and will present the audiences with the most interesting compositions of contemporary authors. 

The first SOUND UP forte will be arranged as a dialog between the champions of the academic music scene and electronic music. 

The festival’s academic part is curated by the celebrated Russian piano player and founder of the Russian piano school for performance of contemporary and early music Alexei Lyubimov. His favorite colleagues and students Mikhail Dubov and Vladimir Ivanov-Rakievsky will give a tour of the piano music’s metamorphoses in the second half of the 20th century, performing compositions of authors from Philip Glass to Hauschka. The festival will open with the performance of the classical piece of the Russian minimalism – “Correspondence” by Vladimir Martynov and Georgs Pelēcis. Sitting at the two grand pianos will be Mikhail Dubov and the musical piece’s author himself, composer Vladimir Martynov.

The electronic part of SOUND UP forte will present three special projects by outstanding Russian producers who experiment with the synthesis of acoustic and electronic sound. St. Petersburg beatmaker Georgy “Long Arm” Kotunov who combines neo-classics with downtempo will perform a special piano set involving electronics and a chamber music ensemble. Producer and composer Azamat, known to the dance music fans as Agraba, will add a string quartet and vocals to the interchange of piano and electronics. Roman “Mujuice” Litvinov, known for dozens of his musical incarnations, will present the first concert performance of his Metamorphosis album for the piano and chamber orchestra.

Nastya by starlight 
V. Young: Stella by starlight

КОНЦЕРТ | 2 | 21:00

Мария Садурдинова и Ульяна Ловчикова - программа сочинений для двух роялей

Meredith Monk, Ellis Island - российская премьера 
Bryce Dessner, El Chan - российская премьера 
David Lang, Orpheus Over and Under: Chorale - российская премьера 
John Adams, Hallelujah Junction 

Михаил Дубов - музыка конструктивизма 

Гавриил Попов, Экспрессия, Мелодия
Артур Лурье, Маски
Леонид Половинкин, Элегия, Электрификат, Неотвязное
Владимир Дешевов, Рельсы 
Александр Мосолов, Соната N4 
Дмитрий Шостакович, Три фантастических танца

!!! ОБРАТИТЕ ВНИМАНИЕ, ЧТО В ПРОДАЖУ ВЫЛОЖЕНЫ БИЛЕТЫ НА КОНЦЕРТ 1 И 2, И АБОНЕМЕНТ НА ПОСЕЩЕНИЕ ДВУХ КОНЦЕРТОВ !!!

Nastya by starlight 
V. Young: Stella by starlight

КОНЦЕРТ | 2 | 21:00

Мария Садурдинова и Ульяна Ловчикова - программа сочинений для двух роялей

Meredith Monk, Ellis Island - российская премьера 
Bryce Dessner, El Chan - российская премьера 
David Lang, Orpheus Over and Under: Chorale - российская премьера 
John Adams, Hallelujah Junction 

Михаил Дубов - музыка конструктивизма 

Гавриил Попов, Экспрессия, Мелодия
Артур Лурье, Маски
Леонид Половинкин, Элегия, Электрификат, Неотвязное
Владимир Дешевов, Рельсы 
Александр Мосолов, Соната N4 
Дмитрий Шостакович, Три фантастических танца

!!! ОБРАТИТЕ ВНИМАНИЕ, ЧТО В ПРОДАЖУ ВЫЛОЖЕНЫ БИЛЕТЫ НА КОНЦЕРТ 1 И 2, И АБОНЕМЕНТ НА ПОСЕЩЕНИЕ ДВУХ КОНЦЕРТОВ !!!