Page 144 - PDF Flip TR Program Demo

the film industry, there is this whole other tex-
ture to life that is so deeply felt and poignant and aching. [The Ambassador] was an effort to unpack those feelings and to juxtapose the mythological representation of LA in film, TV, and fiction with a physical city that is incredibly prone to earthquake and fire and flood. The buildings . . . sit at the in- tersection of those two LAs, because buildings are an aesthetic projection, a mythology, but they also burn down and crack in earthquakes. . . .
The musical devices are really secondary to try- ing to get inside the characters that inhabit these buildings. I’m inventing an interior monologue
for characters that exist in other pieces of popular culture, and there are characters who are invented who come out of an idea that is more sociopolitical or geographical.
The Ambassador began as a theatrical commission from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where Kahane debuted it in a staged version directed by John Tiffany in December 2014. The complete cycle is also available as an album from Sony Masterworks.
BENJAMIN BRITTEN (1913–1976) from Folksong Arrangements
Benjamin Britten arranged folksongs for voice and piano or guitar through most of his career, with the first volume published in 1943 and the last in 1976. He wrote most, if not all, for his partner, the tenor Peter Pears.
Britten’s interest in folksongs of the British Isles reflects his roots in seaside Suffolk. He was not, however, a folk- lorist or enterprising musicologist along the lines of Béla Bartók or Alan Lomax, who collected and recorded songs in the field. Instead, Britten found most of his folksongs in previously published collections; his interest was more to
elevate them to the realm of art song with fully composed accompaniments. The result is still rustic, but with a tinge of the modern.
All four songs selected here dwell on love (usually lost love). “The Salley Gardens” is based on a mashup of an old Irish tune and a more recent poem by W.B. Yeats. “The Trees They Grow So High” is a Scottish song that tells the story of young boy who was married too young. “The Ash Grove” comes from Wales, and the ash grove, naturally, is a gravesite. “O Waly, Waly” is another Scottish song, also known as “The Water is Wide.”
ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841–1904) Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 81
The piano quintet is a powerful and flexible ensemble: nearly every other standard chamber group is a subset of it. While it is most obviously a string quartet with an added piano, any one of the strings can play alone with the piano, or the first violin and cello can temporarily form a piano trio while the others sit out. Even the full quintet can give wildly different impressions depending on who is in the foreground and who is in the background: when the piano accompanies, the strings can unite in bold lines, with the viola and cello freed from bassline and inner-voice duties. And when the strings accompany, the piano becomes a soloist, almost like a concerto in miniature.
Antonín Dvořák’s Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major takes advantage of all these possibilities, and is filled with in- delible melodies and lush textures. The first movement begins with a rolling theme in the cello and piano, starting peacefully in A major but soon inflecting toward minor, heralding the entry of the rest of the strings. Like much of the Quintet, this movement is built around contrasts: major and minor, loud and soft, arches and angles, folksiness and elegance.
144 The Music at Tippet Rise