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Lucerne Festival Features Composer-in-Residence Chaya Czernowin

Jun. 26, 2013

Lucerne Festival Features Composer-in-Residence Chaya Czernowin

As composer-in-residence at the 2013 Lucerne Festival, Chaya Czernowin is honored by several orchestral and chamber performances throughout the summer, including two world premieres and a new production of her chamber opera, Pnima… Inwards.

At the fringe of our gaze, for orchestra and concertino ensemble, was commissioned by the Lucerne Festival and receives its world premiere by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra on August 18 under the direction of Daniel Barenboim. Scored for large orchestra and a separate ensemble of violin, viola, cello, clarinet, piano and percussion, At the fringe of our gaze focuses on a stripping of traditional musical layers that reveals the essential identity of the work underneath. Czernowin elaborates on her process in the piece:

In order to bring the orchestra into my world I decided to start from ‘music’, or what we usually think about as music, with melodies, harmonies, counterpoint etc., and then gradually stop the ‘music’, peeling its layers away so that one suddenly faces what is underneath, what is the undercurrent moving in the air on which it rides, which is where my music really starts. In this sense, the piece is really trying to make the foreign familiar. Indeed it does it to such extent that the familiar ‘music’ becomes estranged in the middle of the piece … because the music of the ‘underneath’ was really put in the middle of the field of our attention.

On August 29, the Lucerne Festival offers a new production as well as the national premiere of Pnima… Inwards, Czernowin’s chamber opera for four vocal soloists, instrumental soloists and string orchestra. The production, which runs through September 8, features the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and soloists of the Lucerne Theater conducted by Howard Arman with direction by David Hermann and stage design by Magdalena Gut.

In a program on September 10, the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra offers the world premiere of White Wind Waiting, a concerto for guitar and orchestra conducted by François-Xavier Roth and featuring guitarist Stephan Schmidt as soloist. The program also includes Georg Friedrich Haas’s Limited Approximations for six microtonally-tuned pianos and orchestra as well as György Ligeti’s Chamber Concerto for 13 instrumentalists.

Additional events dedicated to Czernowin’s music include a performance of Anea Crystal by the JACK Quartet and Quatuor Diotima, as well as Lovesong performed by Ensemble Intercontemporain, Sheva by Ensemble Ascolta, and a portrait concert featuring Afatsim, Die Kreuzung, Manoalchadia, Sahaf, fardanceCLOSE, and Czernowin’s recent Slow Summer Stay No. 1: Lakes.

For more information on Chaya Czernowin, please visit www.schott-music.com.

To learn more about the Lucerne Festival, including concerts details, please visit www.lucernefestival.ch.

At the fringe of our gaze (2012-2013)
for orchestra and concertino group
21’

Pnima... Inwards (1998-1999)
chamber opera
libretto (vocalise) based on the novella See under: Love by David Grossmann
for four vocal soloists, instrumental soloists and string orchestra
70'

Lovesong (2010)
for flute, oboe, bass clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, viola, cello
10’

Anea Crystal (2008)
for two string quartets
22’

Sheva (2008)
for seven instrumentalists
8’

Afatsim (1996)
for bass flute, bass clarinet, oboe, percussion, piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass
10’

Die Kreuzung (1995)
for alto-saxophone, accordion, and double-bass
11’

Manoalchadia (1988)
for two female voices and bass flute
13’

Sahaf (2008)
for saxophone, electric guitar, piano, and percussion
7’

Slow Summer Stay No. 1: Lakes (2012)
for eight players
2cl.bsn-perc-gtr-pno-va.vc
10’

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