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The Rough with the Smooth Tuesday 12 May 2015 The Rough with the Smooth Tuesday 12 May 7pm Queen Elizabeth Hall Violins 1 Kati Debretzeni Huw Daniel Madeleine Easton Roy Mowatt Claire Sansom Mark Seow* Violins 2 Alison Bury Andrew Roberts Claire Holden Jean Paterson Emilia Benjamin Magdalena Loth-Hill* Violas Oliver Wilson Nicholas Logie Kate Heller Louisa Tatlow Emilia Benjamin Daniel McCarthy* Cellos Jonny Byers Helen Verney Ester Domingo Sancho* Basses Chi-chi Nwanoku MBE Cecelia Bruggemeyer Recorders Rachel Beckett Catherine Latham Lute Elizabeth Kenny Chi-chi Nwanoku MBE double bass Frances Kelly harp Elizabeth Kenny lute Harp Frances Kelly Harpsichord/Organ Steven Devine *OAE Experience participant Programme notes Stevie Wishart The Rough with the Smooth: Concerto à Double Entendre i ii iii Kati Debretzeni director/violin Prelude & Fugue Air Passacaglia This concerto is Wishart’s third major orchestral commission. The inspiration for it arose in part from a desire to recreate the role of improvisation in musical performance, which was explored while the composer was a Visiting Music Fellow at the University of Cambridge in 2014. Except in the specialised area of the organ, the role of improvisation has steadily diminished since the time of the Baroque, in favour of an increasingly exact following of increasingly precise instructions from the composer. This is by contrast with the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where such things as continuo realisation and ornamentation – and sometimes even such fundamentals as orchestration – were entrusted to the discretion of the performers. The result of this progressive change has been that something is lost: the performer is less empowered as his or her scope for contributing to the overall sonic outcome is more circumscribed. The Rough with the Smooth Tuesday 12 May 2015 Programme notes Over the course of the last year, Wishart has carried out some research into the role that historically informed improvisation might have in contemporary music, and this concerto is a practical manifestation of these theoretical ideas. The OAE – with its background in music of the 18th century – is ideally placed to perform it. However, the more space there is for the performer to be involved in the creative process, the more the performers need time to rehearse, so that in many ways the score is a timesaving device. In writing the piece, a central concern has been how to work within the constraints on rehearsal time, and the piece will only continue to evolve through successive performances. Wishart has therefore decided to make this piece for Double Bass in the form of a Concerto Grosso using a small core group of soloists as in the baroque ‘concertante’ that would then have a trickle-down effect when the rest of the orchestra, the ‘ripieno’, came together to rehearse. The melodic material is based upon the open strings of the bowed string instruments (violin, viola, cello and double-bass), and is exemplified on the theorbo (something of a bass lute) which has a special tuning using these same pitches: when the theorbo strums through all its open strings (which is its main role throughout), it passes through the resonances of the entire string section.To enhance the resonances of the open-strings (and their overtones and harmonics), the “laisser vibrer” technique is used throughout the Concerto so that all notes are allowed to fade away naturally without damping. This principle guides the string allocation of musical pitches as well as the musical pitches themselves. The musicians’ ability to master this technique of playing each successive note on a different string is intrinsic to the entire Concerto. Only the soloist occasionally wanders outside the open-string pitches, hinting at tonal centres of D major or minor, whereas all the rest of the orchestra concentrate on chords made up of the open strings, giving the entire piece a fragile melodic and harmonic transparency, providing a modern twist on the forward motion and security of traditional Baroque harmony. In the Concerto Grosso form, which is ideal for improvisatory playfulness, the piece unfolds in true Baroque form with a Prelude and Fugue (‘a succession of timbral as much as melodic motifs’, based on the form of the ‘ouverture’ used by many Baroque composers). The Rough with the Smooth Tuesday 12 May 2015 Programme notes It is followed by an Air which plays off the ‘airiness’ of harmonics, and the lead violin’s long held note – a sonic tight-rope hovering over the double bass’s cadenza. In the final Passacaglia the open-string pitch-series becomes intensified as a Baroque-like repeating chord sequence, framed in minute detail by the repeating and continuously waxing and waning harpsichord clusters. During this movement there is a timbral sub-text as the entire orchestra gradually shifts from smooth to rough, from bowing to plucking, while the soloist does the reverse, rough to smooth, drawing the piece to a close with hermetic bowing of its lowest notes. Along the lines of Handel’s Concerti a due cori, there are two concertino groups, divided into a ‘rough’ group made up of plucked strings, and ‘smooth’ group with bowed strings. The solo double bass is included in both groups, forming a sonic ‘bridge’ between the two. The piece is performed without a conductor, being led by violinist Kati Debretzeni who features as a soloist, alongside the principal double bass soloist Chi-chi Nwanoku, to create a musical sound-world rooted in the 18th century’s passion for improvisation and hypnotic harmonic loops. “The piece is all about resonance, overtones and sympathetic vibration. The entire orchestra play only open strings and harmonics so that melodies only surface through a barrage of ‘soundclouds’ and gentle noise.” Stevie Wishart The composer would like to extend warmest thanks to the FoAM studios in Brussels where she is composerin-transience, and to the musicians and colleagues who have helped bring this work to its first performance. Biography Stevie Wishart composer The Rough with the Smooth Tuesday 12 May 2015 Stevie Wishart studied composition and electronic music at the University of York with Trevor Wishart and Richard Orton, as well as improvised and aleatoric music with John Cage in Edinburgh. She continued postgraduate studies in early music (baroque violin and voice) at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (Diploma in Advanced Performance) and with a Vicente Cañada Blanch Junior Research Fellowship at New College, University of Oxford. As a composer, violinist and hurdy-gurdy player/improviser, she often looks back to look forward, and is passionate about exploring music’s unique ability to express new ideas on a level which transcends other routes of communication. Wishart likes the challenge of creating music for a wide range of contexts such as working with Wayne McGregor, and performing (solo violin)/composing for the designer Philippe Starck’s Le son du nous (Exit festival, Paris), as well as more conventional composing including a BBC Proms commission, choral works such as her Vespers for Hildegard (a full-length setting for the Feast of St Hildegard, part of which was performed in St Peter’s Rome and then in full in York Minster), her Cantata The Seasons for the Ipswich Choral Society, and a series of acapella works for St Catharines’s Girls Choir, Cambridge and for Voice. Her work has been supported at the Künstlerinnehof Die Höge, at ZKM (Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie) in Karlsruhe; at the ADK, Akademie der Künste, in Berlin, with a Visiting Music Fellowship at the University of Cambridge, and with an on-going Composer in Transiency at FoAM studios in Brussels. She has recorded for Hyperion, Decca and numerous indie labels. Recent CDs/ DVDs The Sound of Gesture, for violin, sensors and computer sound transformation/synthesis. A series of solo compositions which are conceived as visual pieces and filmed by Berlin video artist Yvonne Mohr. Vespers for Hildegard, for voices, harp, organ and remix tracks (Decca).