Fairytales Program Notes
Piano Sonata No. 1 ‘Gongs and Bells from the Black Bamboo Cathedral’ (2022) - John Rotar
I often like to think of music in terms of pure sound. The raw sound itself, after all, is the most immediate and tactile part of the listening experience. As classical music listeners we can often listen to a piece of music in regard to its harmonic deftness, the poetry of its melodic line or its satisfying sense of form and by listening through this intellectual lens we can sometimes forget to sit back and just be washed in the physical beauty of sound itself. This is not to say that all these attributes are unimportant, on the contrary I love the sometimes emotionally devastating power of harmony and when you can see a work’s form unfurl in real time it’s almost like a magic trick, but for me the starting point is sound.
In that regard this Sonata is in some ways a love letter to the piano. The piano is at the same time one of the most lauded and one of the most ubiquitous musical instruments in the western world. So much of the most incredible music from the greatest musical minds of history exists for this single instrument, though it is this very ubiquitousness which can sometimes cause the piano to be overlooked; just think of the cumulative billions of notes played by collaborative pianists every day to get an idea of what I mean! And yet the piano is also one of the instruments which is so full of illusion, such as the wizardry of creating a singing legato line from what is essentially a percussion instrument, and by embracing this illusion one can be taken into a whole orchestra of sound through the lens of just one musician.
This piece starts and ends with the deep, gong-like sound at the very bottom of the piano, simply activating the amazing sound of the modern grand piano, and from this low rumbling the piece slowly emerges, growing in confidence and plotting a large contiguous musical journey across a landscape where you can just turn your brain off, listen and be taken away into another, more fantastical world.
Program Note © John Rotar
Elergy (2021) - Michael Bakrnčev
My second daughter was born August 5th, 2021. Everything in my life had been thrown off course just prior. I had lost my family’s income, the future was constantly uncertain, there was no light at the end of the tunnel. I used to tell myself that ‘everything happened for a reason’, but that saying had completely lost its meaning by the time I started writing this piece. What should have been the happiest time in my life, turned into the most painful, isolating, upsetting and most tormented moments in my existence. The 5th of August was supposed to be the best day of my life, but fate decided it would be the same day we were thrown into our final and longest lockdown (Delta) in Melbourne.
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Program Note © Michael Bakrnčev
Glisten (2013) - Katy Abbott
Domenico Scarlatti (1685 - 1757) composed about 555 piano sonatas. His sonatas had a distinctive structure on which Glisten is based. The commonalities include the duration and distinctive binary form. Scarlatti often distinguished the two parts of the structure with a pause (termed 'crux' by musicologist Ralph Kirkpatrick). Glisten also includes a crux. The use of modulation as a development tool is important in the development of both the Scarlatti sonatas and Glisten.
The starting point in the writing of this piece comes from a few bars of another work that Abbott was writing at the time: Introduced Species for orchestra. The main motif was taken from one of the motifs found in the second movement of the work, where programmatically, light is glistening on the spray of the ocean's waves.
Program Note © Katy Abbott
New Work (2024) - Ian Whitney
Details coming soon!
Piano Sonata No. 2 ‘A Story from the Sand Dunes’ (2021) - Melody Eötvös
This work is based on the lesser-known Hans Christian Anderson story “A Story from the Sand Dunes”. The narrative follows the life of Jörgen, whose noble Spanish parents perished on the Jutland reefs. His mother barely made it ashore where she gave birth to him with the last of her energy and life. We see Jörgen grow up happy and content with his life, despite the relative poverty he lives in with his adoptive family. There are often comparisons made between his life as a fisherman in the sand dunes of Denmark, and what his life might have been like as Spanish nobleman. Throughout the story there are significant events that take place and there is a wonderful cyclical structure to the story where certain locations or scenarios return but with an important change which reflects the development in the story. It is these important moments that I have focused on in this piece. For each of the five movements they are as follows:
I – The Shore’s Playground
First Subject.
This movement represents Jörgen’s carefree childhood and growing up sustained by the ocean and the shoreline as his playground.
II – The Party
Second Subject.
This is Jörgen’s first trip away from his home. It is described as the brightest four days in all of his childhood, despite the fact that it was for a funeral. He describes the location of the wake as a beautiful and magical place, with inland sand dunes, remarkable vegetation, and Viking graveyards. Here he also developed a thirst to go out into the world and see new places and people.
III – Aesepige
Development.
After travelling for a year, Jörgen returned home to work as a fisherman. He had made friends with another local dune’s boy, Morten. In early Spring the fishermen built temporary huts in the dunes, close to the sea, and each was assigned a girl as a servant, she is called his aesepige. It so happened that the girl Jörgen was very fond of, Elsa, had been hired by Morten because they were sweethearts. However, Elsa confessed this to Jörgen in the hopes that he would take her as his aesepige, so that her relationship with Morten wouldn’t be exposed. In Jörgen’s heartache he developed a hatred for Morten. Eventually though, he gave up this hatred and instead did everything he could, including selling Morten his house) to give Elsa and Morten the best chance at a life together.
IV – Your Crime Will Cost You Your Life
Development - Second Subject.
After Jörgen sold his house to Morten, he set out to see some more of the world. However, the night that he left Morten had been murdered. Having been the last person anyone saw with Morten that night, Jörgen was accused of killing him. He was captured and taken inland, in fact to the exact same place where the funeral party had occurred several years earlier. He was imprisoned here for a while before being moved to another location. During his imprisonment, despite the fact that he knew he was innocent, he came to accept his fate with astonishing contentment and clarity.
V – The King’s Son Clasped His Maiden Fair.
First Subject.
After a year of being imprisoned, it was discovered that Morten had been murdered by someone else who also intended to rob him of the money he had brought for Jörgen.
Jörgen was befriended by a travelling merchant from Skagen who had heard of his plight. They travelled north to Brönne’s (the merchant) home where Jörgen fell secretly in love with his daughter, Clara. She went away to Norway for the winter. Jörgen sailed to fetch her at the end of the Winter and as they neared Skagen, the ship was destroyed on the reef, not unlike Jörgen’s parents. Jörgen leapt out of the ship with Clara and swam her to the shore. On the way he struck his head against the sharp iron edge of a partially submerged wreckage’s figurehead, yet still managed to drag Clara to shore, even though she had already drowned. Jörgen lived for a few more years, with a lost mind, and eventually wandered into the church where Clara and he had last sat next to each other. There a storm blew a sand dune to cover over the church and that is where Jörgen lay to rest.
Program Note © Melody Eötvös