St Petersburg, Concert Hall


Gyorgy Kurtag. Grabstein fur Stephan - Russian premiere
Gyorgy Ligeti. Violin Concerto - Russian premiere
Bela Bartok. Duke Bluebeard's Castle (one act opera)


NEW HORIZONS II Festival of Contemporary Music

Duke Bluebeard's Castle
Duke Bluebeard - Edem Umerov
Judith - Natalia Evstafieva

<Дженнифер Ко>Jennifer Koh (violin)

Prize-winner at International Competitions

Born in Chicago of Korean parents, Jennifer Koh currently resides in New York. She is a graduate of Oberlin College (Ohio) and of the Curtis Institute(Philadelphia), where she worked extensively with Jaime Laredo and Felix Galimir. Since the 1994-95 season, when Jennifer Koh won the silver medal at theInternational Tchaikovsky Competition, the Concert Artists Guild Competition and the Avery Fisher Career Grant, she has been heard with leading orchestrasand conductors around the world, including the Cleveland Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic,the Chicago Symphony, the Cincinnati Symphony, the Detroit symphony, San Diego Symphony, Hartford Symphony, Jacksonville Symphony, Houston Symphony,Charleston Symphony, Helsinki Symphony, the Dortmund Philharmonic, the Polish Chamber Orchestra, Iceland Symphony, the Moscow Radio Symphony and theMoscow State Academic Symphony Orchestra. In December 1999, she made her Carnegie Hall debut performing Mozart’s Violin Concerto in A Major with the NewYork String Orchestra under Jaime Laredo. A prolific recitalist, Jennifer Koh appears frequently at major music venues and festivals, including CarnegieHall, the Kennedy Center, Mostly Mozart (New York), the Ravinia Festival (Chicago) and the Spoleto Festival (Italy).
Jennifer Koh is grateful to her private sponsor for the generous loan of the 1727 Ex Grumiaux Ex General DuPont Stradivari she uses in performance.

 

Great Transylvanian Discoveries in Sound

The subject of the Symbolist opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle can essentially be summed up in one phrase: the two main (and essentially only) characters - the Duke and his new bride Judith - open the doors to a mysterious castle. Here the important thing is not the plot but the atmosphere of mystery and, as it unfolds, the audience finds itself right there together with the characters. In 20th century music, the music of three great Transylvanian composers formed precisely such a mysterious castle. Behind the seven doors of this castle, a previously unknown richness of sound was to be discovered, the varied nature and secret meaning of the rhythm of its inner being.
In the 19th century, Hungarian music faithfully travelled the path of marginal national culture, rejecting the Germanic style. It even gave the world the magnificent Liszt (who albeit composed far from his homeland) and the popular dance style known as the Verbunkos.
But time alters all. In 1911 Béla Bartók was writing his opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle, encroaching on the nature of sound material, discovering the inner link between sound and light, using non-classical harmonies connected with primordiality.
Later, after the War, the mysterious nature of the timbre became one of the key creative tendencies in the music of other composers of Hungarian descent - such as Kurtág and Ligeti.
György Kurtág was extremely laconic in his choice of means. As if afraid of missing the delicate moment of harmony between the life and death of sound, he follows it as if following a sunbeam. He penned many works devoted to the dead. Among them, Grabstein für Stephan is one of the most bewitching.
György Ligeti's Violin Concerto is an utterly transcendental work. The philosophy of timbre brought the composer in the twilight of his creative life to the discovery of cosmic pulsations and metaphysically coloured images. A rare wind instrument, the ocarina, combined with the violin timbre, creates an otherworldly, transparent sound.
Daniil Shutko

 

 

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