Music and theremin performance by Dalit Warshaw.

"While in Babylon" was initially conceived as an a cappella setting of the Hebrew psalm "Al Naharot Bavel" ("By the Waters of Babylon") during the week of Sept. 11, 2001. For this project, I recorded all four voices (SATB) on theremin, playing an "ether-choral ensemble" against myself through overdubbing. I also employed the Electro-Harmonix Talking Machine, a device chiefly used in conjunction with electric guitars in order to expand their timbral palette, adding a vast spectrum of quasi-vocal effects. 

 As a New York native, I had always taken my American citizenship for granted. When the Twin Towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001, I felt for the first time the pangs of true American patriotism, along with a desperate, urgent need to return to my own beloved Manhattan, and an intense frustration at being unable to do so for those first two days after the explosions. Finally back in my studio on West 86th St., I spent the remainder of the week transcribing and editing this piece as WNPR aired the seemingly endless stories of sorrow told by survivors and family members of those left behind. 

"While in Babylon" received its "ether premiere" at Joe's Pub on Sept. 15, 2013, with myself performing the soprano line on theremin over the pre-recorded lower voices.

While In Babylon (for a cappella theremin choir)

With the Israel Contemporary Ensemble. Live performance radio broadcast, Kol Hamusica, Israel

Pierrot Lunaire, Der Dandy, No. 3

CAMILLE'S DANCE (2000)
Grand Rapids Symphony
David Lockington, conductor

Recording of radio broadcast of live performance.

COMPOSER'S NOTE:
The impetus for creating this work was born while on an excursion to Paris in 1996. Upon a visit to the Rodin Museum, I first experienced the vivid impact of Camille Claudel’s sculptures “in person,” so to speak, even though I had been long intrigued by the artist’s output and life story. Especially striking to me was the seemingly recurring motif of the dance, as illustrated in three of her works: In La Valse (1891-1893), for example, a man and woman are caught in swirling – almost decadent – embrace. La Vague (1897) depicts a trio dancing in a circle of abandon, oblivious to the looming wave that seethes above them. And, finally, there is La Fortune (1900), in which the same woman of La Valse has not stirred from her original position of nine years before, only with no one to support her, so that she is destined to fall. 

CAMILLE'S DANCE is inspired by all three of the above sculptures. It is my depiction of the dance of her mind - of her phantoms - that was the force behind them, and which eventually led her to the fate that she herself had anticipated through the stone: her Fortune, that is, her fall. The dance continually vies between two different perceptual realities: the quixotic and manic versus the somber and subdued. Which reality is ultimately victorious is open to question.

Much of the material for this work was conceived while a resident at the Yaddo Artists’ Colony; I am grateful to this organization for having provided me with the ideal – and idyllic – environment for composing such a piece.

                                                          -- Dalit Hadass Warshaw, New York City, 2002

CAMILLE'S DANCE for full orchestra (2000)

NOTES ON AN IMPROVISATION (hommage a Nadia Boulanger) 
Music and performance: Dalit Hadass Warshaw

Composer's note:
This work was written as a tribute to the young Nadia, composer of "Trois Pieces," the opera "La ville morte," and numerous other vocal, chamber and orchestral works. A musical response to her “Improvisation” for solo organ, "Notes on an Improvisation" deconstructs and expands upon Boulanger’s motifs through an emotional lens of loss, as she grieves over the sudden deaths of pianist and composer Raoul Pugno and her sister Lili, those dearest to her and who most understood and encouraged her as a creator. The piece follows her path of transition as, in the face of her sorrow, Boulanger shifts her identity from composer to teacher. It is, at times, wistful, impassioned, grieving and exalted. ~ D. H. Warshaw, Feb. 2022.

NOTES ON AN IMPROVISATION (hommage a Nadia Boulanger)

Dalit Warshaw, composer and pianist.

I call CONJURING TRISTAN a "narrative concerto for piano and orchestra." It is based upon Thomas Mann's novella "Tristan," in which Mann's familiar theme of the  irreconcilable dichotomy between Life and Art is revisited through the character  of Gabriele, a young mother and former pianist in treatment for consumption at  the sanatorium of Einfried. A writer and fellow resident named Spinell reignites  her artistic spirit and encourages her to play through Wagner's opera "Tristan  und Isolde," a transformative "wonder-realm" of experience for both. After a  confrontation between writer and husband, Kloterjahn, Gabriele dies. 

The piece incorporates heavily the leitmotifs of Wagner (notably in the cadenza, as the piano/protagonist plays a fantasy on the themes of Tristan und Isolde, corresponding to the climactic moment in Mann's story). The structure of the concerto is comprised of the following four sections:

I. Overture - Theme I ("Gabriele") - Theme II ("Spinell") - Dialogue ("Scherzando")

After a brief overture depicting the sanatorium "Einfried" (literally translated as "enclosure"), we are introduced to Gabriele, a willowy, open-ended theme characterized by an ascending figure of D-E-F-G. Her theme has two parts, the B-section describing her illness as her coughs are bandied about between orchestra and piano. Spinell, a quixotic, eccentric and Romantic figure, is personified by a whimsical, staccato melody in bassoons and pizzicato low strings, interrupted by occasional outbursts of gallant lyricism in the strings.

II. "Ballet of Maladies"

Akin to a development section, the characters' motives are fragmented and Wagner's leitmotifs from "Tristan"appear in different manifestations, as we are now introduced to the other residents of Einfried, with their various symptoms. Gabriele's motives (both four-note phrase and "cough") are presented in fragmentation by the piano, becoming increasingly overwhelmed by the orchestra, ultimately leading to a crash that ushers in the cadenza.

III. Cadenza.

This cadenza is a fantasy on the prominent "Tristan" leitmotifs. It coincides with the climactic scene in Mann's story, in which Gabriele plays through Wagner's opera in its entirety at the piano.

IV. Conclusion: Spinell's Letter (Fugato) - Confrontation with Kloterjahn - Gabriele's Death

As Spinell spars with Kloterjahn (embodying the ultimate conflict of Life versus Art), the leitmotif of Marke (from Wagner's "Tristan") is heard for the first time. The confrontation is interrupted by a sudden scream, as Gabriele endures her final coughing spell. Her theme is heard once more in farewell, entwined with Wagner's leitmotif depicting Tristan's death in Act III. At the conclusion, the famously unresolvable" Tristan chord"is resolved in its two capacities, enabling interplay between alternate enharmonic spellings: both resolutions (one in G# minor, the other in A minor) are superimposed, allowing for an ambiguous bitonal chord (indeed, an "impossible" reconciliation between the keys of A minor and G sharp minor) to close the piece. 

This recording is taped from a radio broadcast aired in 2015.

CONJURING TRISTAN for piano and orchestra (2015)

Pulling sounds from thin air—Leon Theramin’s 1919 invention has been inspiring musicians for a century now. Dalit Warshaw’s Concerto for Theramin and Orchestra, called “Sirens,” is featured on the next Albany Symphony concert with Theramin virtuoso Carolina Eyck performing. We spoke with composer Dalit Warshaw about the new work.

Dalit Warshaw on "Sirens" Concerto

SIRENS: A CONCERTO FOR THEREMIN AND ORCHESTRA (2018)
I. "Clara's Violin"
II. "Ulysses"
III. "Fugal Horn"

Albany Symphony - NOT FOR DUPLICATION OR REBROADCAST

Carolina Eyck, theremin
David Alan Miller, conductor

Recording of New York premiere: Nov. 9, 2019

COMPOSER'S NOTE:
The theremin has many paradoxical qualities. It is an electronic instrument, yet can sound profoundly musical, even human. While it is the forerunner for so many subsequent technological inventions ranging from high security alarm systems to the synthesizer, it also remains the electronic instrument most sensitive to human presence, despite the fact that it is played without being touched. Playing the theremin presents its highly unique challenges and marvels, among them dealing with its imaginary, fluctuating aerial fingerboard (for which having absolute pitch is preferable). Also, dynamics and articulations are achieved inversely, as the default state of the instrument – when at rest – is sound, the hand carving away at its negative space much like a sculptor chisels at stone, through interference within the electromagnetic field. To perform the theremin as the inventor intended was to imprint the human musical capacity and technique onto the non-human: it was to lend soul to a machine.

This concerto explores, in the course of its three movements, different connotations of the term "siren." Movement I ("Clara's Violin") presents a musical depiction of the legendary theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore's story, the narrative created through an interaction of leitmotifs derived from the names of the related characters and the instruments they played. Movement II ("Ulysses") enacts Kafka’s parable “The Silence of the Sirens,” based on Homer’s tale from the Odyssey, in which an alternate theory is presented regarding the nature of musical torment inflicted by the deadly Sirens upon the sailors’ ears: Kafka maintains that even more lethal than their seductive song, in fact, were their punishing interruptions of silence. For the composer, the irresistible challenge was to create an atmosphere so unsettlingly radiant as to tantalize the listener, the Sirens’ melody (and corresponding leitmotif) interrupted at odd moments with increasingly deafening silences. A loop canon in two voices concludes the movement (as the Sirens were a pair!). The trance is interrupted by Movement III (“Fugal Horn”) a romping, scherzando fugue that degenerates into the final type of “siren” presented in this concerto: an alarm, evoked by the wide glissando effect that is one of the instrument’s trademarks (not unlike the orchestral “siren” utilized frequently by composers of the early-mid-20th century, notably Varese). Following a climactic shriek, and a merging of theremin and orchestra into one “meta-theremin,” leitmotifs based upon the composer’s own signature conclude the work.

WMHT LIVE Broadcast - December 1, 2019

Bloom for English horn and Wind Ensemble

RESURRECTION for solo piano (May 2020)

Dalit Warshaw, piano.

RESURRECTION for solo piano (2020)

To What Was Thought and Back
for Violin and Piano

by Jeremy D Carlisle

Georgy Valtchev, violin
Lora Tchekoratova, piano (https://tchekoratova.com)

Composed as part of the Summer Composition Symposium, Evening Division, The Juilliard School, August 2020. Dalit Warshaw, professor. 

Copyright ©2020

To What Was Thought and Back for Violin & Piano (Live recording)

Welcome to my site, and thank you for visiting! Stay tuned for uploads of my latest works, as well as my performances on both piano and theremin. For more clips, please peruse my YouTube channel. I hope you enjoy!

        An internationally acclaimed composer, pianist and thereminist, Dalit Hadass Warshaw’s works have been performed by numerous orchestral ensembles, including the New York and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras (Zubin Mehta conducting), the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Houston Symphony, the Albany Symphony and the Grand Rapids Symphony. 

Warshaw’s music has been widely praised for its lyricism, unique orchestral palette, distinctive harmonic vocabulary, emotional intensity and vivid portrayal of character. Notable orchestral premieres within the last decade include “Conjuring Tristan,” a “narrative concerto” for piano and orchestra based on Thomas Mann’s “Tristan,” and "Sirens: A Concerto for Theremin and Orchestra," performed by both the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and the Albany Symphony. “Sirens” was described by the Boston Globe as a “sublimely expressive concerto,” and listed among “Boston’s Best Classical Music Concerts in 2019.” 

Accolades in recent years include a Guggenheim Fellowship (2016), the Copland House Residency Award (2023), two MacDowell Fellowships (2019, 2024), a commission from New York State Council on the Arts (2022), and the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2017), given to mid-career composers of exceptional gifts. Warshaw has also been the recipient of five ASCAP Foundation Grants to Young Composers, a Fulbright Scholarship to Israel, a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and two BMI Awards, among other honors.

In addition to performing the premiere of her piano concerto with the Grand Rapids Symphony in 2015, Warshaw has soloed as pianist with the Rockland Symphony, Cheyenne Symphony, and the Misgav Chamber Players under the direction of Lukas Foss, and has been featured widely as both soloist and chamber player in venues such as Avery Fisher Hall, Alice Tully Hall and Bargemusic, where she debuted her seven-movement piano work, “Different Loves, A Cycle of Classical Portraits,” in 2021.

Having studied theremin with the renowned Clara Rockmore from an early age, she has appeared as theremin soloist with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the New York Festival of Song, and the San Francisco Symphony, also performing with ensembles including the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the American Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, and the Elbphilharmonie. 

Warshaw holds Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in music composition from the Juilliard School, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University.  A full-time member of the composition faculty at the Boston Conservatory from 2004 to 2014 and former composition faculty at the Juilliard School Extension and Pre-College, she currently serves as Adjunct Professor of Composition at Brooklyn College (CUNY). 

Warshaw’s portrait CD, "Invocations," was released in January 2011 and is available on Albany Records. Her debut orchestral CD will be released on the BMOP/sound label in September 2024.

While In Babylon (for a cappella theremin choir)

Dalit Warshaw

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