PERFORMERS
TCCC artists:
Magdalena Sas - cello; Evgeny Zvonnikov - violin; Natalia Korenchuk - violin; Pedro Oveido - viola
PROGRAM
Duo for Violin and Cello (2015) - Jessie Montgomery
Breathing Sunlight for viola and cello (2017) - Akshaya Avril Tucker
Limestone and Felt for viola and cello (2012) - Caroline Shaw
Suite for two violins (1943) - Grażyna Bacewicz
NOTES ON THE MUSIC
Duo for Violin and Cello - Jessie Montgomery
“This piece was written for my friend and cellist Adrienne Taylor. The piece is meant as an ode to friendship with movements characterizing laughter, compassion, adventure, and sometimes silliness.”
— Jessie Montgomery
Breathing Sunlight - Akshaya Avril Tucker
"‘Breathing Sunlight’ is inspired by a melody that started winding into my mind in 2015. When I began learning the Hindustani Raga Bhimpalasi a year later, I realized that it virtually matched the contour of this melody, in pitch as well as in mood. In this piece, finally, the melody found its place. However, I do not state the melody outright. Rather, I watched it oscillate somewhere in the background, beyond the conscious mind of the piece. It approaches the surface and recedes, in one line or through bubbling polyphony. It appears in different speeds — sometimes more like a slow alaap, at other like a fast tarana.
A common misconception about Indian Classical music is that it is a microtonal system. For this reason, I want to clarify that my use of quarter tones in Breathing Sunlight does not stem from my transcription of Raga Bhimpalasi, or any raga. Instead, quarter tones are just one timbral technique I use to create a space that is thick with the kind silence you experience when listening to (or playing) a tanpura.*
‘Breathing Sunlight’ is about moments spent with those who will leave us soon. Simple things, like lying on the grass, in the sun, breathing - these moments of conscious stillness, within a mind racked by mental and physical discomfort - are as significant as they are fleeting. The love we feel in those moments is strong, transcending our physical boundaries, and becoming memories for those left behind.”
*Tanpura: the 4-string plucked string instrument used as an overtone-rich drone in Indian Classical music.
— Akshaya Tucker
Limestone and Felt - Caroline Shaw
“Limestone & Felt presents two kinds of surfaces – essentially hard and soft. These are materials that can suggest place (a cathedral apse, or the inside of a wool hat), stature, function, and – for me – sound (reverberant or muted). In limestone & felt, the hocketing pizzicato and pealing motivic canons are part of a whimsical, mystical, generous world of sounds echoing and colliding in the imagined eaves of a gothic chapel. These are contrasted with the delicate, meticulous, and almost reverent placing of chords that, to our ears today, sound ancient and precious, like an antique jewel box. Ultimately, felt and limestone may represent two opposing ways we experience history and design our own present.”
— Caroline Shaw
Suite for two violins - Grażyna Bacewicz
I. Allegro
II. Andante
III. Vivo
IV. Tempo di menuetto
V. Allegro
VI. Andante. Fughetta
VII. Allegro
Bacewicz composed this piece in 1943 during the German occupation of Poland. With this work, she shows us that even two violins performing for a few people in an underground concert (the only way she could share her music during the war) might uplift the listener, and affirm something positive in life. The work she produced during the war ended up placing her among the best Polish composers of the 20th Century. She was the only woman to be accepted as such by her male colleagues.