Sō Percussion / Dawn Upshaw / Gilbert Kalish CAROLINE SHAW Narrow Sea

 

NARROW SEA

 

Dawn Upshaw / The Andalucian Dogs GOLIJOV Ayre - BERIO Folk Songs

Osvaldo Golijov has long felt a kinship with Berio's music, and he's created a song cycle, Ayre, to demonstrate Dawn Upshaw's vocal range, just as Berio did with Cathy Berberian's in his Folk Songs. Golijov says he “saw a rainbow" when he first realized the range of colour in Upshaw's voice. Upshaw says: “Ayre takes me vocally to places where I have never been before: in aesthetic terms, it's opened new doors." The cycle is scored for an ensemble similar to Berio's, but also including the accordion and ronroco (an Argentinian variant of the charango, a small South American fretted lute) and also the laptop, which Golijov regards as a 21st-century folk instrument. The klezmer-tinged clarinet solos were inspired by David Krakauer, the world's most celebrated klezmer innovator; two of the songs were written by Gustavo Santaolalla; Wa Habibi comes from the Arab superstar Fairouz; Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain is the inspiration for the final song. Golijov's texts are in Arabic, Hebrew, Sardinian, Spanish and Ladino (the lost language of Spanish Jews); his melodies are a meld of three cultures - Christian, Islamic and Jewish - which coexisted peaceably in the Iberian peninsula until the late 15th century.
Luciano Berio's Folk Songs for voice and seven instruments, composed 40 years ago for his wife Cathy Berberian, blazed the trail for composers wanting to blur the distinction between “folk" and “art" music. Not all of these eleven pieces are folk songs in the strict sense of the word: two are by the American composer John Jacob Niles and two are by Berio himself. But the others come from Armenia, France, Sicily and Sardinia, with one being an Azerbaijani love song recorded on an old 78 by a singer with a town band and aurally transcribed by Berio and Berberian themselves. Berio's scoring evokes a world beyond the concert hall: he uses the viola and cello to suggest the outdoor clarinet and folk fiddle, and he beefs up the flute and harp with tambourines and side drums.
For Osvaldo Golijov the music of Luciano Berio occupies a special place: “I always connected with it - he spoke to me with a directness, as Piazzolla had done when I was a child." (Michael Church
7/2005)

Dawn Upshaw - Esa-Pekka Salonen KAIJA SAARIAHO La Passion de Simone

Kaija Saariaho is a prominent member of a group of Finnish composers and performers who are now, in mid-career, making a worldwide impact. She studied composition in Helsinki, Freiburg and Paris, where she has lived since 1982. Her studies and research at IRCAM have had a major influence on her music and her characteristically luxuriant and mysterious textures are often created by combining live music and electronics. Although much of her catalogue comprises chamber works, from the mid-nineties she has turned increasingly to larger forces and broader structures, such as the operas L’Amour de loin and Adriana Mater and the oratorio La Passion de Simone.

I have been reading Simone Weil’s writings since my youth. The Finnish translation of her book Gravity and Grace was one of the few things I packed into my suitcase when I travelled to Germany in 1981 to continue my studies in composition. Later, I began to read her writings in the original French and also learned more about her life.

The combination of Weil’s severe asceticism and her passionate quest for truth has appealed to me ever since I first read her thoughts. La passion de Simone was specifically the result of collaboration with Amin Maalouf and Peter Sellars; together we chose the different parts of Weil’s work and life for the libretto before I began composing. Whereas I have always been fascinated by Simone’s striving for abstract (mathematical) and spiritual-intellectual goals, Peter is interested in her social awareness and political activities. Amin brought out the gaping discrepancy between her philosophy and her life, showing the fate of the frail human being amongst great ideas. In addition to Simone Weil’s life and ideas, many general questions of human existence are presented in Amin’s text.

La Passion consists of 15 stations. The idea for the form of the text and the entire work came from the Passion play tradition. This outer form is, however, the only similarity to the traditional oratorio, at least in my opinion. The 15 movements are different in character and structure, and they shed light on different moments in Simone Weil’s life and interpret some of her ideas. The soprano has the crucial role of the narrator. Weil’s own texts are presented in the electronics surrounding the audience. The choir and orchestra create the world in which live both the soprano part and the spoken words in the electronics part.

La Passion de Simone is dedicated to my children Alex and Aliisa.
(Kaija Saariaho)