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New York Premiere of Bernard Rands' Memo 5

Feb. 01, 2013

New York Premiere of Bernard Rands' <em>Memo 5</em>

The fourth annual Composers Now Festival kicked off in style with the magnificent "Music of Now Marathon" at New York City's Symphony Space, February 2, featuring the New York premiere of Bernard Rands’ solo piano work Memo 5 with Ursula Oppens. Oppens took the stage at 6PM amidst a wonderfully diverse daylong program curated by Symphony Space Artistic Director Laura Kaminsky. Memo 5 constitutes the fifth installment of the composers’ series of pieces for solo instruments that spans a creative period of more than 50 years, each with the title Memo (contrabass, trombone, harp, flute, alto saxophone, female voice and oboe round out the series). Siôn Philip writes:

Each Memo seeks to engage the performer’s virtuosity in an exploration of their instrument’s contemporary possibilities resulting in music that does not rely on traditional forms and formulas. In fact, Rands has written that Memo 5 is partly a reaction to what he called “PPP music – pretty piano pieces!”  Here instead, there is no reliance on melodic-thematic constructs but rather a succession of musical objects, sometimes simple and elementary but mainly complex and dense in a rapidly-changing succession and dramatic, unexpected juxtapositions, creating an exciting, sonorous response from the piano.

Rands adds, “Each musical object is like a coiled spring each releasing its energy to propel the musical discourse.” In the final moments of Memo 5, the entire keyboard and its full sound spectrum is activated, resulting in a cloud of complex resonances. 

For precise concert details, visit www.symphonyspace.org.

Learn more on the life and work of Bernard Rands at www.bernardrands.com and www.schott-music.com. 

Bernard Rands
Memo 5 (1975)
for solo piano
9’

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