Estonian National Symphony Orchestra 
Normunds Šnē, conductor 
Soo-Young Lee, clarinet 

From Estonian Music Days festival, Estonia Concert Hall, Tallinn, Estonia 
28.04.2023
Klassikaraadio / ERR
Sound engineer Teet Kehlmann

Clarinet Concerto ''Kraft''

Magdalēna Geka – solo violin
Sinfonietta Riga
Normunds Šnē – conductor
Live 24.01.25., Rīga (premiere)
Recorded by Latvian Radio

“The one-movement violin concerto can be compared to a journey through two spaces. In each of them, the solo violin leads the way with an extended solo episode or cadence like a scout. The two spaces are not opposites, but rather complement each other – the first is a guess, and the second – an assertion. Echoes of Franz Schubert’s song “Der Leiermann” (from the cycle “Winterreise”) run through the piece throughout – here and there both the characteristic melodic intonations and the accompaniment’s empty fifth – traces of Schubert’s composition, which musically symbolizes loneliness and solitude. The overall atmosphere is melancholic (the score often features the term dolente), which is highlighted by the English horn line. The solo part of the piece was composed with Magdalēna Geka’s playing qualities in mind – her bright temperament, emotionality and rich timbral palette.”

Jānis Petraškevičs


words with letters lost (violin concerto, 2023/24)

Pulss, mõõn ja voolamine / Pulse, Ebb and Flow (2012)

underwaters

"The Colour of Water" for solo saxophone(s) (soprano/alto/baritone) and chamber orchestra commissioned by the Saxophonia festival (LV) and Klaipėda Music Spring (LT) 


"I expected to find complete darkness down below but at some point, much to my surprise, the ocean floor appeared transparent and radiant". Jacques Piccard, Swiss oceanographer and engineer

"..e il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare". Giacomo Leopardi (..and sinking in this sea is sweet to me)

“The Colour of Water” is the 3rd part of my Latvian trilogy together with “Elongation of Nights” (2009) for string orchestra and “Observation of Clouds” (2012) for voices, winds and strings, continuing to explore some discoveries made in the first two parts and also dedicated to Riga Sinfonieta, Maestro Normunds Šnē and the Lithuanian saxophone player Arvydas Kazlauskas residing in Latvia.

The piece is an attempt to poetically reflect on the illusory colour of water that doesn’t actually exist, trying to give answers through musical metaphors of reflection and generating the musical material while applying mirror principles which predetermine both macro and micro levels. The solo part is based on the obsessively oscillating pendulum of low and high notes gradually increasing the distance between them. As a consequence, the expanding space between the opposite poles is being filled in with the orchestral “liquid” of changing timbre/harmony colours until this symbolic container becomes inevitably overfilled.

The strings are placed on the stage in a way to create the sound moving in an hypnotic circle/vortex which unites the swinging opposite poles of the solo part, whilst the soloist is being surrounded by the rising waves and submerged deeper and deeper down where the breathing stops and the tension of the polarity is released. Justė Janulytė

"The Color of Water" for saxophone(s) and chamber orchestra (2017)

Inspiration for gravest one—the second composition i have written in memory of my late Father—came from a poem by E. E. Cummings, No. 61 from his 1963 collection 73 Poems, charting the steady descent upon a gravestone of a snowflake. My Father's ashes are interred within a garden of remembrance, & the poem invoked memories of numerous occasions spent in that garden, contemplating his death & attempting to grapple with the bereavement. The title draws on the final words of Cummings' poem, deliberately ambiguous between the obvious reference to the physical stone, & the less obvious metaphysical reference to oneself, the person grieving in the garden, the 'gravest one'.

The piece opens with a single, long bar of slowly descending melody, very simple designed to evoke the gradual, graceful descent of the snowflake described (& visually depicted) in the poem. An important pitch throughout is D-flat; the melody begins on this note, as a high natural harmonic, & ends on it, a metaphorical 'impact note'—the point at which the snowflake symbolically strikes the stone. From here opens up the body of the work, a series of three 'scenes', each exploring an aspect of the coming-to-terms with bereavement, using one third of the original snowflake melody, reversed & inverted.

The first scene, 'gravitas', is concerned with the religious connotations associated with death, of funeral rites & ceremonial reverence. Something palpably forced often frequents these occasions, something that—though part of the grieving process—usually does not remain true to the person who has died, failing to speak of them as they truly were or, worse, ostensibly beatifying them. The music is therefore both rhythmically simplified & melodically ornamented. The original rhythms betray their presence, however, in a separate pattern of bowing, out of step with the melodic rhythms.

'graven', the longest of the three scenes, focuses on our futile attempts to preserve the deceased person's memory, to 'keep them alive', & the temptation to see everything in their life through rose-tinted spectacles. The music is broken into three discrete strands of melodic material; the first contains the original material—now played 'as though every note & gesture is imbued with utmost significance & profundity'; the second takes fragments of this material & obsessively repeats them, with increasing wildness & desperation. The third strand is altogether different, 'inscrutable & translucent', containing glimpses of the original snowflake melody, reversed so that it ascends from whence it came.

Played with a heavy metal practice mute, the third & final scene, 'grave', expresses something of the abject grief & sense of loss death inflicts. The music is unyieldingly melancholic, reduced to barely a quarter of the original tempo, & fragmented with <em>pizzicato</em> notes. Within all this is a single ‘strenuous but ardent’ attempt by the cellist—through the use of acutely embedded note divisions—to drag the tempo back to its original speed, to no avail.

Interspersed between these three scenes is a series of 'resonances' or 'ripples' emanating from the original D-flat impact. The last of these, at the conclusion of the work, becomes a moment of apotheosis, where the impact of death becomes the transcendence of the afterlife. Therefore, within the painful final scene lies a quiet acceptance of death, combined with the joyful rising into paradise. This is heard through increasing glimpses of the reversed snowflake melody, which ascends to its starting point, where it hovers, before passing into the beyond.

This recording is of the first performance, played by Arne Deforce at the 2002 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

gravest one (2002)

In Paradisum is my first work for the piano. It was composed principally as a gift for my wife, Anna; nonetheless, thoughts of my late Father dominated my thinking while i worked on the piece, so it is also the third work of mine to explore that bereavement. In contrast to those other works, however, this piece—while expressively diffuse—is an entirely positive, affirmative statement.

In Paradisum (2006)

Intense quick dream of sentimental groups with people of all possible characters amidst all possible appearances

Composed in late 2009, this piece took its inspiration from a short poem by E. E. Cummings, from his collection '73 Poems':

wild(at our first)beasts uttered human words
—our second coming made stones sing like birds—
but o the starhushed silence which our third's

Like the poem, the piece explores three behavioural states, the first of which is loud & ferocious, the players attacking their open strings with brute force. Later, this develops into milder, more lyrical material, before finally yielding to sparse, faint harmonics. Rather than dividing the piece into three clear sections, these three states evolve & bleed into each other, their respective characters gradually taking shape, but ever in flux.

The title is a phrase found in Arthur Rimbaud's poem 'Vigils', from his well-known collection 'Illuminations'; it sums up rather nicely the universality i have sought to capture in the piece.

This recording is of a workshop performance given by B.C.M.G., conducted by Richard Baker.

Intense quick dream (2010)

from 'ink botanic' 

https://jezrileyfrench.co.uk/ink-botanic.php

a recording of the root system of a group of plants - mainly japonica peach blossom but with other smaller species also.

recorded using prototype JrF microphones based on the c-series contact mics. 

listen with headphones for the more subtle sounds alongside those of regular transpiration.

Pulss, mõõn ja voolamine / Pulse, Ebb and Flow (2012)

Helena Tulve