Ed McKeon  - Don’t Panic! Music, austerity, and pleasure
talk/presentation

Jonathan Powell, pianist

Notations project performance
Ensemble Avgarde

(30 min intermission)

Windspiel 
Sing to me of Heaven
Verena Wüsthoff (recorders) & Eva Zöllner (accordion)

–> Transport: Troldhaugen // Troldhaugvegen 65. Take the Light Rail (Bybane) in direction “Nesttun” and leave the tram on the station “Hop”. There will be a Borealis shuttle bus from and to the Bybane before and after the concert. You can also walk (20 min), follow the signs to Troldhaugen. Look at the map.
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Ed McKeon  - Don’t Panic! Music, austerity, and pleasure
foredrag/presentasjon (engelsk)

A century ago, the Rite of Spring caused a scandal. Within 30 years, it was accompanying animated dinosaurs plodding to their extinction in Disney’s Fantasia. Music now seems to be absorbed into culture (as Feldman used the term) at an alarming rate. What’s not absorbed is effectively ignored, tolerated as long as it’s done in private – or at least among its friends. Like an embarrassing uncle, it’s rarely allowed in public unless it’s on its best behaviour. Of course this is oversimplified, but it does reflect the binary logic felt by many composers (at least in the UK) to be imposed on them. New music is either given a deaf ear or left to its madness in the attic. In our new age of
austerity, this perspective also questions the legitimacy of public subsidy. Arts that don’t serve the public can’t be afforded; and arts that entertain a large audience should be able to pay their own way. We seem to be stuck between an injunction to reassure audiences and a compulsion to rebel and challenge them. Perhaps another way to frame music’s relationship to audiences is through an economy of pleasure. What might this tell us about ‘the public’, and of music’s role in a time of social and political upheaval?

Ed McKeon is a musician who doesn’t perform or compose. He is co-director of Third Ear Music, producing and commissioning new music in the UK, from features on Heiner Goebbels, Annie Gosfield, Brian Eno, Gorecki and Stockhausen, to gallery projects based on the voice. He’s also an occasional broadcaster for BBC Radio 3, a visiting tutor at Birmingham Conservatoire, an adviser on programmes with early career composers, and writes and speaks on new music.

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Jonathan Powell

Georges Aperghis’ (b. 1945) A tombeau ouvert (1997) 20’
Charles Ives (1874 – 1954) The Celestial Railroad (1925) 8’
Horatiu Radulescu (1942 – 2007) Sonata no.6 ‘Return to the Source of the Light’ (2007) 18’
Franz Liszt (1811 – 1886) La Lugubre Gondola I & II (1882/85) 7’
Giacinto Scelsi’s (1905 – 1988) Un adieu (1978/88) 7’
Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) Vers la flamme (1914) 4’

This program presents composers’ reflections and commentaries on the end of life, in music written in the 19th, 20th and present century. Scriabin, Radulescu and Ives meditate on the philosophical and spiritual aspects of the end of our existence: Ives’ work is a commentary on the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne’s (1804 – 1864) work of the same name, which describes two pilgrims who board a train that takes them even beyond the River Styx, while both Scriabin’s and Radulescu’s music deals with the dematerialization of physical matter into subatomic particles, not only literally but also spiritually. While Liszt’s and Aperghis’ works both derive their titles from the physical trappings of funeral rites, they approach the subject entirely differently. The program is completed by one of Scelsi’s final, and appropriately named, pieces, Un adieu.

Jonathan Powell, pianist

Jonathan Powell is a pianist, composer and writer on music; he lives in Gliwice, Poland. He has received private tutoring from the esteemed pianists Denis Matthews and, for a longer period, Sulamita Aronovsky. His latest programs include concertos by Mozart, Field, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Finnissy. He spent much of 2012 touring in Lithuania, the Czech Repulic, Slovakia, Ukraine and elsewhere with Albéniz’ Iberia and Messiaen’s Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jésus, as well as works by Murail, Ferneyhough, Aperghis, Radulescu, Tiensuu, Ligeti and a host of younger composers. He has a particular interest in music of the early 20th century, especially the music of Scriabin and other Russian modernists as well as Ives, Szymanowski, Enescu and Sorabji. He has worked with musicians such as Rohan de Saram, Ashot Sarkisjan, Matteo Cesari, and the sopranos Svetlana Sozdateleva, Irena Troupova and Sarah Leonard.

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Notations project performance
In collaboration with Ensemble Avgarde

Sofya Dudaeva, flute
Øyvind Skarbø, percussion
Per Inge Hove, harmonium

Graphic scores are interpreted by an unusual combination of instruments. The project ensemble of Avgarde is a meeting place between different musical genres that experiments with timbres and explores new soundscapes.

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Windspiel 
Sing to me of Heaven 
Verena Wüsthoff (recorders) & Eva Zöllner (accordion)

Windspiel

Johann S. Bach (1685-1750) Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern 2’
(arr. Windspiel)
Beat Gysin (*1968) Anor (2006) 10’
The Sacred Harp (Georgia, 1886) Choral Sing to me of Heaven
John Cage (1912 – 1992) Harmony 35 5’
(1986, from Thirteen Harmonies)
Mario Lavista (*1941) Ofrenda (1986) 8’
The Sacred Harp (Georgia, 1886) Choral The Lone Pilgrim
John Cage (1912 – 1992) Harmonies 15 & 42 (1986) 5’
Jacob Obrecht (after 1450-1505) Parce, Domine 3’
(arr. by Windspiel)
Sofia Gubaidulina (*1931) De Profundis (1978) 10’
Josquin Desprez ( ca. 1440-1521) In Pace 3’
(arr. by Windspiel)
The Sacred Harp (Georgia, 1886) Choral Paradise
John Cage (1912 – 1992) Harmonies 18 & 11 (1986) 5’
Georgina Derbez (*1969) La Forca, il sparvier (2007) 7’

Sing to me of Heaven is a church concert with music by composers who deal very personally with spiritual topics and traditions. From the middle ages until today, composers have been inspired by theological ideas, which is a vital aspect in the music of this programme. Contemporary compositions are framed by motets from the middle ages, choral variations by J.S. Bach and 19th century chorales from American church song books. Sing to me of Heaven gives an opportunity for the audience to contemplate these themes and reflect their own feelings towards the central aspects of our religious beliefs. Through the unique and special atmosphere of this music, man’s questions about our provenience and destination are musically expressed.

Windspiel was founded in 2000 by Verena Wüsthoff (recorders) and Eva Zöllner (accordion). Both musicians are dedicated to the performance of contemporary music and they work passionately to explore and advance their instruments´ repertoire and to present it in new contexts.
Being the world´ s only professional recorder accordion duo specialized in contemporary music, and having gained more than 10 years of performance experience, the two musicians astound the public with their lively and authentic interpretations. Collaborations with composers from all over the world have resulted in a wide range of high-quality compositions for this unique and colourful combination of instruments, which are regularly performed in concert series and festivals around the world. With unusual, creative and multidisciplinary projects Windspiel aims to intrigue their audiences and to familiarize a widespread public with contemporary music.