This is a beginning of my piece Escape for piano (plus amplification and delay), performed by David Plylar, a composer and pianist and recorded with a great help of ChristopherBrakel, composer.

More info is available from my web-site: http://veraivanova.com/works.html

Vera Ivanova - Escape (fragment)

This is a fragment from my piece for large orchestra, performed by Eastman Philharmonia (conducted by Clay Greenberg).

More info on my website: http://veraivanova.com/works.html#Orchestra

Variations on chords: Distances for Symphony Orchestra (2003) (excerpt)

Commissioned and first performed by Oleh Krysa and Tatiana Tchekina, Fantasy-Toccata for violin and piano is a vigorous interplay between two contrasting main themes and two instruments, acting as a couple of dancers on stage, dancing independently, synchronously, and solo, revealing their characters. The exchange of short tunes between the instruments was inspired by traditional Russian hand-made patchwork, where small patches of different fabric create a larger mosaic-like cloth, enriched by a vast color palette. The present recording was made at Synchromy concert where the piece was performed by Iryna Krechkovsky and Kevin Loucks.

Fantasy-Toccata by Vera Ivanova

"Bachiolage" was composed in 2014 for and dedicated to Maxim Velichkin. The piece refers to J. S. Bach on several levels: harmonically (it is rather tonal), through the use of Bach's motif (i.e., the letters of his last name, B-A-C-H, which translate to the notes as B-flat, A, C and B-natural), and through a performance technique, which stylistically belongs to the Baroque era: bariolage. In The Oxford Companion to Music, bariolage (Fr.) defined as "a special effect in string playing, used to produce a contrast in tone-colour. It is achieved by playing the same note alternately on two different strings, one stopped and the other open; the term is also used for a repeated passage played on different strings ."
In my piece "bariolage" is applied to a combination of open strings and harmonics, thus emphasizing even stronger the contrast in tone-colour. The title plays with two words: Bach (the BACH motif) and "bariolage" (technique), merging the two words into one, just like the a fast alteration between open strings and harmonics merge in a contrasting tone-colour texture throughout the composition. 


Bachiolage

Three Studies in Uneven Meters were composed in the Spring of 2011. This set of etudes is dedicated to several 20th-century composers, who influenced my music in the past (Bartok, Kagel, Stravinsky, Piazzolla, Scriabin) and whose compositional technique is referenced in these three pieces: 1. BartoKagel (and a little bit of Stravinsky), 2. Canon à la Piazzolla (descending canon with all voices sustained), 3. Scriabinesque (fleeting cycles).
The last study (Scriabinesque, fleeting cycles) explores the harmonic world of Alexander Scriabin, restricted to its own rules of horizontal and vertical sonorities. Even though this study does not reproduce Scriabin's harmonies, it makes use of interval "cycles" (chain of repeated intervals of the same type). Due to the sameness of interval cycles, the harmonic and vertical sonorities in this piece are locked (or "fixed") and thus reference some of Scriabin's etudes.

"Scriabinesque, fleeting cycles" from "Three Studies in Uneven Meters"

"Un~Now" for solo voice is a setting of an absurd poem by the Russian poet Daniil Kharms. In the text, some words are repeated; in the song, they are linked to certain notes in order to re-create the structure of the poem musically and to preserve the original poetic form.

Performed by Judith Caplan (U.K.) at the Creative Voices concert, directed by Sarah Walker http://www.sarahwalker.com/



Un-Now for voice solo

Still Images of the Restless Mind is a reflection on an emotional state of mind when the most important personal images, preserved in the memory, come to the rescue of the disturbed mind. 

Still Images of the Restless Mind

"Aftertouch" was composed in 2006 and premiered by Daniela Mineva at Eastman School of Music. where we were both doctorate students at the time. Daniela asked me to write a piece for her to take it to the 8th International Piano Competition in Orleans (France), where it was awarded the André Chevillion-Yvonne Bonnaud Composition Prize. In 2011 this piece was performed by Mark Robson at Piano Spheres concert series in Los Angeles. It is scheduled for the CD release with PARMA recordings.

Here is a fragment from my program notes for the piece:
"Exploring the sensitivity of the piano keys to the different types of pressure (including the silent pressure of the keys with the sustained pedal held) is my interpretation of the term aftertouch, if one can apply it to the acoustic piano. On the other hand, this title implies the composer’s intent to make the listener pay attention to the life and death of each sound with regard to the variety in attacks and decays.  This variety and timbral richness of the instrument, along with the resonances of short and sustained sounds, which produce quite different effects, were the main inspiration for this piece."

Aftertouch for piano solo

Vera Ivanova is a composer of contemporary concert music and an educator, based in Los Angeles, U.S.A. 
Vera received her music education in Russia (Moscow), U.K. (London) and U.S.A. (Rochester) and currently teaches at Chapman University.
To learn more about Vera, please visit her web-site at www.veraivanova.com 

Vera Ivanova

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