#4337: Music for Strings
Once upon a time, many centuries ago, someone looked a stringed hunting bow and thought: “Hmmm… I think I’d rather use this thing to make music rather than hurl arrows”.
And thus began one of the first stories of how stringed instruments came to be.
We start the show in Latvia, where composer Pēteris Vasks is best known for his choral works, but in his work Plainscapes, he combines wordless vocal writing with violin and cello to evoke images of night, landscapes, and birdsong. He looked to his homeland for inspiration: “The source of inspiration was our motherland, Latvia – the landscapes of Zemgale, where the lowlands are endless. You can see the horizon from any place at all. The lowlands are endlessly diverse, and they are beautiful at any time of year, both during the day and at night. The composition is an extended meditation in which the choir sings a vocalise-elegy three times – seemingly the same thing, but a bit different each time.”
From Latvian lowlands to Brooklyn’s Church of St Anne, American composer Christopher Cerrone’s High Windows was written for the unusual combination of string quartet plus string orchestra, in case you needed an extra serving of strings.
Next, something sweet to cleanse the palate from newly-appointed Composer in Residence at the Royal Opera House Oliver Leith, who's Honey Siren oozes sonic viscosity. As the title suggests, when writing this piece Leith was thinking about sirens (the wailing kind, not the mythological bird-woman on a rock kind): “They make these beautiful, huge oblong sweeping glissandi between high and low, like a machine crying. They usually signal something ominous; these sirens do not. They are honeyed, dripping in globules of sweetness, golden and moving between solid and fluid. Like a smiling alarm."
We end in the Metacosmos with Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s all-encompassing tone poem that explores the balance between beauty and chaos and the feeling of falling into an endless black hole. - Rosa Gollan
Program #4337, Music for Strings (First aired 3/6/2020)
ARTIST: The 12 Ensemble
WORK: Oliver Leith: Honey Siren - III. Like Slow Dancing In Honey [1:00]
RECORDING: Death and the Maiden
SOURCE: Sancho Panza Records
INFO: The 12 Ensemble
ARTIST: The Choir of Clare College Cambridge with Graham Ross
WORK: Pēteris Vasks: Plainscapes [15:01]
RECORDING: Arvo Pärt: Stabat Mater
SOURCE: Harmonia Mundi
INFO: Presto Music
ARTIST: String Orchestra of Brooklyn, Argus Quartet, Eli Spindel (cond.)
WORK: Christopher Cerrone: High Windows [12:53]
RECORDING: Afterimage
SOURCE: New Focus Recordings
INFO: newfocusrecordings.bandcamp.com
ARTIST: The 12 Ensemble
WORK: Oliver Leith: Honey Siren - III. Like Slow Dancing In Honey [8:20]
RECORDING: Death and the Maiden
SOURCE: Sancho Panza Records
INFO: The 12 Ensemble
ARTIST: Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Bjarnason cond.
WORK: Anna Thorvaldsdottir: Metacosmos [12:48]
RECORDING: Concurrence
SOURCE: Sono Luminus
INFO: Sono Luminus
