Program:
Wachner:
An October Garden (NY Première) for chorus, flute, clarinet and piano
Washington Master Chorale Chamber Choir
Thomas Colohan, Conductor
Improvisations
Julian Wachner, piano
Gawlick:
Imagined Memories (World Première) for string quartet
Hugo Wolf Quartet
At the still point of the turning world for solo violoncello, (New York Première)
Rafael Popper-Keizer, cello
An October Garden (New York Première)
1. Spring
2. A Summer Wish
3. An October Garden
4. Winter: My Secret
Melissa Baker, flute
Eileen Mack, clarinet
Wen Yang, double bass
Julian Wachner, piano
Washington Master Chorale Chamber Choir
Thomas Colohan, conductor
An October Garden is a four movement, 25 minute work based on four separate poems by Christina Rossetti. The poems are united thematically by the procession of the four seasons. The scoring for flute, clarinet, piano, and chorus is patterned after the chamber music of Francis Poulenc. An October Garden was commissioned by the Washington Master Chorale and received its premiere in Washington, DC on October 18, 2015. It is dedicated to the life and memory of Dr. Gerald Perman.
Imagined Memories for string quartet, (World Première)
Sebastian Gürtler, Violin
Régis Bringolf, Violin
Subin Lee, Viola
Florian Berner, Cello
Imagined Memories musically explores distinct personal reflections. Heritage,
origin, cultural and national ethnicity are popular watchwords that draw
attention to safeguard the individual from collective oblivion. Our present
age has brought us increasingly closer together – we are the intersections of
cultural, technological, social, and political migrations. Somewhere in these
shifting sands is our identity – its preservation depends upon the active
presence and cultivation of memory: real and imagined. Additional information
Photo of Hugo Wolf Quartet by Andrej Grilc
At the still point of the turning world, (New York Première)
Rafael Popper-Keizer, cello
Ralf Yusuf Gawlick has created another milestone for the cello in a work that
expands the very conceptions of the instrument’s aesthetics and technique, At
the still point of the turning world, Op. 9. Both of these substantial pieces
are performed by one of the great cellists of our time, Rafael Popper-Keizer,
to whom Ralf Gawlick’s Op. 9 is dedicated. Additional information