In the final episode of the current series, we hear a selection of audio reflections from some composers and musicians on the past year. Roger Doyle, Judith Ring, Isabelle O’Connell, John McLachlan, Frank Corcoran, Anne-Marie O’Farrell, and Jenn Kirby all provide insights into their creative lives over the past 15 months and look ahead to the future.

Further information and show notes - https://www.cmc.ie/amplify/episode-47

Subscribe to the podcast - https://www.cmc.ie/amplify-subscribe

amplify #47 - audio reflections

Evlana presents a captivating programme spanning four decades, blending ensemble and solo works by Edgard Varèse, Deborah Cheetham, Siobhán Cleary and Keiko Abe - all showcasing the extraordinary virtuosity of Evlana's performers. The concert takes its title from Gemma Peacocke’s haunting setting of a poem by Lola Ridge, the Irish-born, New Zealand-American activist and poet.

Judith Ring’s The River Was Never Afraid, a Finding a Voice commission, receives its second performance and Dublin premiere. At the programme’s heart is the New Music Dublin/Evlana commission: a new work by Stephen Gardner, which sets Paula Meehan’s poignant elegy An Eagle Feather, written in memory of the late Dr Eilish Cleary. Paula Meehan introduces and reads her poem before the performance. Closing the evening is Joan Tower’s Petroushskates, a vibrant, rhythmically charged chamber work that captures the icy grace of figure skating alongside the playful spirit of Stravinsky’s Petrushka.

Gemma Peacock- A Memory

Vain Prayer, choreographic poem for orchestra

Performers:
BBC Symphony Orchestra 
Pierre-André Valade, conductor

‘…how can that be wealth of which a man may have a great abundance and yet perish with hunger, like Midas in the fable, whose vain prayer turned everything that was set before him into gold?’

Aristotle: Politics (Book 1, Part IX)

Formed of two tableaux, Vain Prayer is a choreographic poem for orchestra after the Midas myth, the Greek legend of a King granted the wish that everything he might touch turn to gold. In particular, I’ve long-loved Nathaniel Hawthorne’s version, wherein Midas’ blinding and unquenchable thirst for ‘that precious metal’ leads, through fateful embrace, to his daughter’s transformation into a golden statue. His greatest sorrow and loss comes ‘in the fullness of all his gratified desires’, made more resonant by ‘the questioning look of love, grief, and pity, hardened into her face…the prettiest and most woeful sight that ever mortal saw.’

Vain Prayer was written as part of a Sound and Music/BBC Symphony Orchestra 'Embedded' Composer Residency, and was premiered at Maida Vale studios on the 24th March 2016. 


Vain Prayer, for orchestra

Elliptical Galaxy // Piano + Tape // 2018

Performed by Sylvia O'Brien (Soprano) Bill Dowdall (Flutes)
Keith Pascoe (Violin) Alex Petru (Percussion) Isabelle O' Connell (Piano)@ The National Gallery of Dublin. )Oct 18th 2018
Text by Aloys Bertrand
Ondine
 (Aloysius Bertrand 1842)

 Écoute! — Écoute!
C’est moi, c’est Ondine 
qui frôle de ces gouttes d’eau les losanges sonores
 de ta fenêtre illumine
 par les mornes rayons de la lune;
 et voici, en robe de moire, 
la dame châtelaine qui contemple à son balcon
 la belle nuit étoilée et le beau lac endormi.

 Chaque flot est un ondin qui nage dans le courant, 
chaque courant est un sentier qui serpente vers mon palais,
 et mon palais est bâti fluide, 
au fond du lac, dans le triangle du feu, de la terre et de l’air.

 Écoute!  Écoute! 
 Mon père bat l’eau coassante d’une branche d’aulne verte,
 et mes sœurs caressent de leurs bras d’écume les fraîches îles d’herbes,
 de nénuphars et de glaïeuls,
 ou se moquent du saule caduc et barbu qui pêche à la ligne.
Sa chanson murmurée,
 elle me supplia de recevoir son anneau à mon doigt, 
pour être l’époux d’une Ondine, et de visiter avec elle son palais, pour être le roi des lacs.

Et comme je lui répondais que j’aimais une mortelle, boudeuse et dépitée,
 elle pleura quelques larmes,
 poussa un éclat de rire,
 et s’évanouit en giboulées qui ruisselèrent blanches le long de mes vitraux bleus.

 “Listen! Listen! Do you know what you hear?
It is I, Ondine, spirit of the water,
who brushes these drops,
The water on the resonant panes of your windows,
lit by the gloomy rays of the moon.
And here, in a gown of watered silk,
gazing from my chateau terrace,
I contemplate the beautiful starry night
and the restless sleeping lake.
“The waves are my sisters, swimming the paths
which wander towards my palace…
The walls are at the bottom of the lake,
in a fluid structure of earth and fire and air.
“Listen! Listen! Do you know what you hear?
My father strikes the water with an alder branch,
My sisters caress the grass with arms of white foam,
lift the water lilies, move the rushes,
and tease the bearded willow which casts its line,
baited with leaves, into the darting water.”
When she had breathed her song, she begged me –
begged me – to put her ring on my finger;
to be her husband and sink with her down –
down to her drowned palace
and be king of all the lakes.
I told her I loved a mortal woman.
Abashed and vexed, she dissolved into tears and laughter;
vanished in a scatter of rain –
white streams across the dark night
of my window.

Ondine

Episode 16 of CMC's podcast features conversations about dealing with the Covid-19 Pandemic with pianist Isabelle O'Connell, composer Frank Corcoran, and soprano Elizabeth Hilliard. Presented by Jonathan Grimes and Evonne Ferguson.

Further details and show notes: www.cmc.ie/amplify/episode-16

Isabelle O'Connell, Frank Corcoran and Elizabeth Hilliard - amplify #16

Gráinne Mulvey: Sun Of Orient Crimson with Excess of Light 
(for piano and electronics)

Isabelle O'Connell, pianist

World Premiere recorded at Finding a Voice Festival, Clonmel
March 7th, 2020

Gráinne Mulvey: Sun Of Orient Crimson with Excess of Light

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The first in a new series of CMC's podcast features a special tribute to composer Eric Sweeney, who passed away in July of this year. The episode features contributions from David Adams, John Buckley, Hazel Farrell, Ronan Guilfoyle and Grainne Mulvey about the composer's life, music and sizeable contribution to music in Ireland. Presented by Jonathan Grimes and Evonne Ferguson.

Further information and show notes: https://www.cmc.ie/amplify/episode-25

Gráinne Mulvey: Sun Of Orient Crimson with Excess of Light

IsabelleOConnell