Ritmata

Description

Edino Krieger was born in Brusque, Southern Brazil, in 1928. At the age of 7 he began to study violin with his father, Aldo Krieger, himself a violinist, composer and conductor. In 1943 he entered the Brazilian Conservatory of Music in Rio de Janeiro, with a grant by the State Government, and started to study composition with H. J. Koelreutter. In 1945 Krieger was awarded the Música Viva Prize for his Woodwind Trio and subsequently joined this group of young composers. In 1948 Edino Krieger was awarded a grant to study under Aaron Copland at the Berkshire Music Center, Massachusetts, USA, and afterwards he received another grant from the Department of State and a scholarship to study with Peter Mennin at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. He simultaneously received violin lessons from William Nowinsky, assistant to Joseph Galamian. Back in Brazil, he started working as a radio producer at the Ministry of Education Radio Station in Rio de Janeiro. In 1955 he was awarded the prize at the International Festival of Warsaw, Poland, and received a grant from the British Council to study with Lennox Berkeley in London. In 1959 his Divertimento for Strings received the first prize at the First National Composition Contest in Brazil, sponsored by the Ministry of Education and was awarded the Medal of Merity by the Municipal Theatre of Rio de Janeiro. In the years 1966 and 1967 Krieger received the National Prize for Records with his String Quartet and two Gold Medals at the International Festivals of Popular Song of Rio de Janeiro. In 1969-1970 Edino Krieger organized the Guanabara Music Festivals, which in 1975 gave birth to the Bienal of Brazilian Contemporary Music. In 1969 and 1988 he was awarded the Golden Dauphin Prize for Composition. Krieger was Classical Music Director of Radio Jornal do Brasil as well as music critic of Jornal do Brasil. In 1979 he organized the Brazilian Musical Memory Project at the National Foundation for the Arts and was appointed Director of the National Institute for Music and President of the Foundation. In 1987 Edino Krieger was awarded the Shell Prize for Brazilian Music and in 1994, he received the National Prize for Music from the Ministry of Culture. Edino Krieger’s aesthetic evolution began with his impressionistic Improviso for Solo Flute in 1944, to reach serialism with the Woodwind trio. In 1952 he changed from serialism to neo-classical style with Brazilian flavour. In 1965, with the Elementary Variations, he began creating a synthesis of his previous experiences, using serialism and other contemporary procedures together with Brazilian and classical elements. Among his recent works are the Três imagens da Nova Friburgo for strings and harpsichord (1988) the oratorio Romance of Saint Cecilia (1989), the Camerata for six instruments and the Concerto for two Guitars (1994) recorded by Sérgio and Odair Assad (GHA 126.046).

“The Ritmata, which I composed in 1974 for Turibio Santos’ series by Max Eschig Editions, initially carried the title Toccata. The pulsating rhythm of the toccata present in, for example, Prokofiev’s work has always strongly attracted me. In my opinion contemporary music from the 1970’s tended to favor amorphic structures and lacked certain rhythmic dynamics. It was especially those rhythmic dynamics that I deemed a natural, or even better, an organic necessity. The Ritmata begins with an introduction that is based on the sound of tapping on guitar strings, a totally new experience for me and hardly practiced at the time. Subsequently, a melodic module comes in that creates the notion of a pulsation and ultimately becomes the main module of the entire piece. Quieter tapping sounds can also be found in the middle part of the piece and rhythmic tappings on the instrument’s wooden side parts are used in the finale to reinforce the rhythmic character of the composition.”
Edino Krieger

« As a child I was already fascinated by the mysterious geometric figures in the night sky, called constellations. In the piece for guitar that bears the same name, these groupings are remembered by the frequent use of little melodic cells by which the themes are being composed. One principal motif served as a guideline for composing, but is quite unrecognizable by the very free arrangements it is submitted to, such as enlargements, reductions or reversals of intervals. Constellations, composed in 1986, describes the poignancy of the common man in relation to the mystery and grandeur of the celestial phenomena. »
Armand Coeck

Composer, guitarist and director, Leo Brouwer was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1939. He studied with Nicola Pujol’s pupil and specializing in composition, completed his studies at the Juilliard School of Music and at Hartford Music Department. In 1987, Brouwer was selected along with Isaac Stern and Alan Danielou to be an honorable member of UNESCO, in recognition of his music career – an honor that he shares with Menuhin, Shankar, Sutherland and other giants of music. Brouwer has conducted orchestras around the world including the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Scottish National Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Chamber Orchestra and the Mexico National Symphony Orchestra. He has been heard as both composer and classical guitarist at virtually every major music event in the world and is also the author of the famous work Cancion de gesta (Epic Poem), recorded and played by the most important orchestras in the world. His discography is comprised of over a hundred commercial recordings. His works have been recorded by personalities such as John Williams, Julian Bream, Franz Bruggen, Harry Sparnay, as well as musical centers such as the Toronto Festival, the BBC Chamber Orchestra and the Liège Festival among others. In 1993, he composed the music for Alfonso Arau’s internationally acclaimed, award winning movie “Like Water for Chocolate”. He also serves as General Manager of the Cuban National Symphony Orchestra and from 1992 to 2001, he has been conductor of the Cordoba Orchestra in Spain.

“Tellur starts off as a kind of wager : how can one produce the long sound continua necessary for my work on procedures, transitions and evolutions, on an instrument that produces brief, plucked sounds ? I found the answer by using the flamenco rasgueado technique and even, more generally, by employing the style and sound of flamenco. The way attacks on the strings, for example, are dealt with is particularly delicate and careful: two textures can be produced on one string simultaneously that evolve in different ways (by disassociating the percussive sound caused by the nails on the strings – a sound that has an exact and controllable frequency – and the sound produced by the resonance of the strings themselves). I also used passages that move progressively from sound to noise (gradual dampening of the strings), the progressive appearance of harmonics, of harmonic resonances of flat chords, unusual fingerings for harmonics, multiple trills using both hands … etc. Tellur is a typical example of a score whose content is derived essentially from sound material provided by the instrument itself – even if the instrument is stretched and used in such a way as to subject it to requirements of style. There is thus, total interaction between basic material and material style. The instrument is tuned in a special way, enabling chords or rasgueado formulae to be used that avoid the guitar’s inevitable E-A-D-G-B-E layout”. (Tristan Murail)

Self-taught and passionate about Western music, which he actively sought to promote in Japan, Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996) not only gained international recognition with his Requiem for String Orchestra (1957), but also the admiration of Igor Stravinsky. It is a composition firmly rooted in the composer’s notion of duality, meaning that he wished to develop simultaneously in two different directions: on one side the Japanese, so respectful of it’s traditions and on the other side the Western direction, which he greatly respected for its innovative qualities. Nature is another theme that features heavily in the work of Toru Takemitsu through its numerous references (such as water, seasons, rain tree, river, bird, winter, garden, waves, landscape, sea, sky …etc). In addition to his classical works comprising chamber music, pieces for piano, numerous compositions for orchestra, choir music, electronic music and an unfinished opera, Takemitsu has left a musical legacy of hundreds of film scores, essays (more than twenty) and many articles published in different music papers and magazines.

Toru Takemitsu composed “All in Twilight” at the request of Julian Bream and created it for him in New York in 1988. It is an ensemble of four pieces inspired on a painting of Paul Klee with the same title. It is not a reflection of landscapes, but rather of sensations and different states of emotion within a clearly defined atmosphere. This seamlessly fits into Toru Takemitsu’s views on music mirroring a Japanese garden « everything is in unison like in nature, like dense sand, ever flowing water, stones changing appearance from every possible angle, trees absorbing the earth’s water, grass and flowers rapidly growing”.

Nuccio D’Angelo studied the guitar with Alvaro Company and composition with Gaetano Giani-Luporini. His composition Due Canzoni Lidie won the first prize at the Festival of contemporary music of Tokyo in 1984. He teaches classical guitar at the “Mascagni Musical Institute” in Livorno and has led courses of guitar and composition in Rome, Lucca, Macerata, Agropoli, Florence, Portoferraio (Elba), Catania, Monza, USA, Canada, Hamburg and Marktoberdorf (Monaco). He received a special prize in 1996 at “The European International Competition for Composers” in New York and La chitarra d’oro per la composizione (Alessandria – 1997)

In an imaginary place where memories of ancient “melos” and archaic modal forms reside, Due Canzoni Lidie (1984) is about an enchanted traveller who discovers the charm-fascination of a primeval forgotten world. The sonorous spaces encountered during this revisitation are enlightened and embellished by a strict respect for the ancient modality, rediscovered beyond any intellectual vision without diminishing its expressiveness. Recurring in its original melodic form, the Lydian mode here becomes vivid with the magic of its resonance and, thanks to a wide use of harmonic and melodic sounds produced in various strings, generate precise polyphonic elements full of ambiguity and harmonic polyvalencies. From a purely technical point of view, “Tranquillo” is a free “Divertimento” made up of several recurring thematic phrases, in a contest where the primary compulsory structural pillars are made of the Lydian gregorian modality and of the almost ever present 7/8 rhythm. “Agitato” is a “Fantasia” characterized and generated by a melodic-transportable cell (Eb-D-B) where the primary Lydian scale is enriched by chromaticism.