Dace ZĀLĪTE-ZILBERTE
Ilze URBĀNE – acting associate principal
Agnese EGLIŅA – piano
Programme:
Samuel Barber, Lowell Liebermann, Elliott Carter, George Crumb, Heitor Villa-Lobos.
The United States of America. On the one hand – Disney, Gershwin, Rodgers, Sinatra and the rest. On the other – Salinger, Wilder, Kerouac, Ives and the rest. We need both the one America and the other, yet of that other one there is all too often too little; and so on 27 November Minsteres Hall will resound with music by the long-lived mathematician Elliott Carter, the defender of whale rights George Crumb, the sentimental lyricist Samuel Barber and the sentimental melancholic Lowell Liebermann, joined in their company by the Brazilian classic Villa-Lobos.
The flautist Ilze Urbāne is a seasoned and superb interpreter of contemporary music, as is the pianist Agnese Egliņa. At the concert on 27 November we shall have the chance to hear how the young cellist Dace Zālīte, whose playing is powerful and bold, takes her place alongside this duo.
George Crumb (Crumb) is represented at this concert by two works. One is the vivid and poetic “A Little Suite for Christmas”, with its characteristic Bethlehem scenes cast in lullaby and dance rhythms. The other is the celebrated “Voice of the Whale” (Vox balaenae) – three masked musicians stand on stage, their silhouettes barely discernible in the faint glow of flickering blue lights. The composer says of the piece: “I took my inspiration from the song of the humpback whale, which I had heard on a recording some years earlier. The performers are advised to wear black masks during the performance, so as to lessen the sense of human presence and to make the mighty forces of nature – dehumanised nature – symbolically palpable.”
Among the American composers of the older generation, the trio has turned its attention to Samuel Barber, and of his works the programme includes the wondrously beautiful “Canzone”, which is scarcely less lovely than Barber’s famousAdagio. A quite different character – brisk and full of movement – marks the flute miniature by Elliott Carter, who lived to be 103, with its evocative title “Scrivo in Vento”. In his final years the Brazilian elder statesman Heitor Villa-Lobos is said to have been captivated by the restless sound of jet aircraft: in 1950 he wrote a three-movement opus for flute and cello, named it “The Jet Whistle” and, in the third movement, had the flute imitate the howl of a jet engine. Last of all comes Lowell Liebermann and his Sonata for Flute and Piano – another example of the undisguised urge of many American composers to build their music on contemplative, romantically felt moods that everyone can readily understand.
All in all, an exhilarating sonic adventure seems to be in store, with the escapades of humpback whales, a parade of jet aircraft, the adoration of the infant Jesus and poems written in the wind.