Featuring soprano Elizabeth Watts and violinist Alexander Janiczek

kafkafragmente‘ In the struggle between yourself and the world, side with the world…’

By György Kurtág31st May – 4th June 2011

31st May – 4th June, 2011 Programme

Robert Schumann Liederkreis op. 39 movement 7 ‘Auf einer Burg’ (transcribed for cello and piano)

Janáček     The Kreutzer Sonata (1923) (arr. for piano trio by Till. A Korber)

Interval

Kurtág Kafka Fragmente (for solo violin and soprano)

Performers Soprano Elizabeth Watts Violinist Alexander Janiczek Piano Philip Moore Cello William Conway Director Rene Zisterer Lighting/Production Kate Bonney Stage Manager Paul Tracey

Performances 31st May The Arches, Glasgow1st June The Queen’s Hall,

Edinburgh 3rd June CBSO Centre,

Birmingham 4th June Howard Assembly

Rooms, Leeds

Would audience members please ensure that all mobile phones and other devices that may become audible during the performance are fully turned off.

Kafka Fragments by György Kurtág is a work that goes to the heart of mankind’s existence, seen through a mix of cutting insight, profundity and at times mundane day-to-day experiences. To encounter the piece offers the possibility of an insight into our own lives, journeys and destinations. If art provokes reflection, inspires, antagonises and soothes then this is Art with a capital A.

The story-telling and fragmentary nature of Kurtág’s piece is complimented here by another great 20th Century work, Leoš Janáček ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’ based on Leo Tolstoy’s novella of sexual jealousy and rage. Although Janáček’s writing here is episodic and fragmentary, a wonderful dramatic lyricism pervades the work carrying the listener on a breathtaking journey. Originally Janáček intended to write a piano trio based on this novella but the fragments of that composition were lost in the war and Janáček later re-wrote the piece for string quartet. We will play a version transcribed for piano trio.

Continuing the theme of fragmentation and bearing in mind Kurtág’s admiration of Schumann I extracted a movement from Schumann’s song-cycle Liederkreis, the haunting Auf einer Burg, and treat it as a song without words for cello and piano. Playing on the theme of words and irony we have a singer who at times speaks rather than sings; songs without words and large-scale music made up of forty tiny movements and fragments.

I hope you enjoy tonights performance.

Wiliam Conway Hebrides Ensemble Artistic Director/Cellist

Welcome

Liederkreis, Op. 39 The text of this song cycle by Robert Schumann was taken from Joseph Eichendorff ‘s collection of poetry called Intermezzo. Schumann wrote two cycles of the same name, the other being his opus 24 setting of Heine.

Schumann completed the cycle in 1840 – his so-called “year of song” or Liederjahr. The op 39 work is also known as the Eichendorff Liederkreis and is one of the great song cycles of the 19th century.

In ‘Auf einer Burg’, the themes of desertion, loneliness, timelessness and lifelessness are portrayed in ‘ancient’ harmonies throughout the song. Seen through the eyes of an old knight in the grounds of an abandoned castle overlooking the River Rhine. The music builds a stunning, enigmatic, multi-layered intensity with the final consonant of the final word “weinet” (weeps) echoing endlessly into infinite space.

‘Auf einer Burg’ is one of twelve songs in the cycle and tonight it is performed as a song without words, transcribed for cello and piano.

Auf einer Burg Eingeschlafen auf der Lauer Oben ist der alte Ritter; Drüben gehen Regenschauer, Und der Wald rauscht durch das Gitter. 

Eingewachsen Bart und Haare, Und versteinert Brust und Krause, Sitzt er viele hundert Jahre Oben in der stillen Klause. 

Draussen ist es still und friedlich, Alle sind ins Thal gezogen, Waldesvögel einsam singen In den leeren Fensterbogen.  Eine Hochzeit fährt da unten Auf dem Rhein im Sonnenscheine, Musikanten spielen munter, Und die schöne Braut, die weinet.Joseph von Eichendorff

In a castleFallen asleep on watch, Up there is the old knight; Rain showers pass above, And the forest rustles through the grating. Beard and hair all grown together, Breastplate and ruff turned to stone, He sits for many hundreds of years, Up there in the silent hermitage. Outside it is still and peaceful; Everyone has gone down into the valley; Solitary forest birds sing In the empty window arches. A wedding procession passes below On the Rhine in the sunshine; Musicians play merrily, And the beautiful bride, she weeps.

In 1923, Janáček was asked by the Czech Quartet to compose a new work. He produced his Quartet No.1 ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’ after Tolstoy’s novella. The origins of this work lay in a lost piano trio which was written as a celebration of Tolstoy’s 80th birthday in 1908 – 09. The wtrio as well as the quartet quotes from Beethoven’s violin sonata of the same name. Janáček professed his programmatic background to the piece in a letter to his friend Kamila Stösslová in October 1924.       I’ve not yet heard anything as magnificent as the way the Czech Quartet played my work. […] I myself am excited and it’s already a year since I composed it. I had in mind a poor woman, tormented, beaten, battered to death, as the Russian writer Tolstoy wrote in his work The Kreutzer Sonata.

The quartet became popular in the years following its first performance, despite the darkness of its programme. In 1925 it was included in a Wigmore Hall concert, as well as performances at the ISCM Festival in Venice.

A woman who is trapped in a loveless marriage plays Beethoven’s sonata with a dashing violinist, and seems carried away by the music’s passion. Her husband, plagued by jealous fantasies, cuts short a business trip and comes home unexpectedly. He finds her together with the violinist in the dining room, fully clothed but involved in an intimate conversation. Convinced she has betrayed him, he kills her in a fit of jealous rage. Since Tolstoy narrates this tale through the husband’s obsessive and bitter point of view, we never find out what has happened between the unnamed wife and her sonata partner.

In tonight’s performance you will hear an arrangement of the quartet for piano trio by Till. A. Körber.

Robert Schumann (1810 – 1856) Auf einer Burg from Liederkries Op. 39 (transcribed for cello and piano)

Leoš Janáček (1854 – 1928) ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’ (arr. for piano trio by Till. A Körber)

Kurtág was born at Lugos (Lugoj in Romania) on 19 February 1926. From 1940 he took piano lessons from Magda Kardos and studied composition with Max Eisikovits in Timisoara. Moving to Budapest, he enrolled at the Academy of Music in 1946 where his teachers included Sándor Veress and Ferenc Farkas (composition), Pál Kadosa (piano) and Leó Weiner (chamber music).

In 1957 – 58 Kurtág studied in Paris with Marianne Stein and attended the courses of Messiaen and Milhaud. As a result, he rethought his ideas on composition and marked the first work he wrote after his return to Budapest, a string quartet, as his opus 1.

In 1958 – 63 Kurtág worked as a répétiteur with the Béla Bartók Music Secondary School in Budapest. In 1960 – 80 he was répétiteur with soloists of the National Philhamonia. From 1967 he was assistant to Pál Kadosa at the Academy of Music, and the following year he was appointed professor of chamber music. He held this post until his retirement in 1986 and subsequently continued to teach at the Academy until 1993.

With increased freedom of movement in the 1990s he has worked increasingly outside Hungary, as composer in residence with the Berlin Philharmonic (1993 – 1994), with the Vienna Konzerthaus (1995), in the Netherlands (1996 – 98), in Berlin again (1998 – 99), and a Paris residency at the invitation of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Cité de la Musique and the Festival d’Automne.

Kurtág won the prestigious 2006 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his ‘…concertante…’.

György Kurtág is published by Boosey & Hawkes

Every once in a while a piece of music seizes you and maintains a stranglehold for its entire duration and beyond. For me, the Kafka Fragments by György Kurtág have this effect. The complexity of ideas conveyed is gripping, but only because they are matched by music that is vicious, subtle, at times unexpectedly beautiful, and written so as to be a joy to perform. The violinist in me purrs with delight at the feel of the open fifths in the ‘Szene am Bahnhof’ (Ex.1), although the necessary interpretation of the image presented is deeply disturbing.

Kafka’s aphorisms seem tailor-made for Kurtág’s almost intolerably condensed musical forms. The tiny ensemble of violin and soprano is made to bear an edifice of startling sonic variety, demanding an exhilarating virtuosity and imbuing the text with layer upon layer of reference. The music and potential meanings thus created are incredibly allusive and yet so saturated with violent emotional intensity that were the piece not already a collection of fragments it would threaten to tear itself apart. For a work that obsesses on the inability of the creative artist to express, it is extraordinarily direct.

To be fragmentary means to be broken, partial, scattered, and irrational; something that had a purpose is rendered useless whilst still retaining a ghost of its former rationale. Seeking to exploit these factors, Kurtág employs fragments to highlight the importance of the unsaid or unsayable. His fragments take delight in gaps, contradictions, discontinuities, and paradoxes; they rely on instinct to navigate a world which is a celebration of irrationality.

This is the world of the Kafka Fragments, where progress must be negotiated through pre-ordained failure. Forty songs – shards of music, few longer than a minute – chart an endless journey in search of the ‘True Path’, the validity and even existence of which the lone protagonist continually questions.

Aphorisms, the predominant literary form

of the Kafka Fragments, stem from a frustration with the limitations of linguistic expression and rely on contradiction and allusion to hint at underlying meanings: they demand to be stumbled over. This spills into the performing realm, where Kurtág indicates his intentions simply and clearly yet over-specifies his requirements to the point of extreme ambiguity. With precise yet paradoxical performance directions, (e.g. ‘quasi senza rit’) Kurtág abdicates authorial intent at the same time as prioritizing it.

Most poignant of all the echoes of an expressive crisis is the desire for song and companionship dramatised by the two soloists. There are literal failed attempts at speech where the protagonist stammers her inability to tell a story, or loses her voice. There are attempts by the violin, which interacts with the voice like another character and yet cannot vocalize. Even the soprano struggles: the basic style of writing is anti-lyrical, avoiding song-like gestures and remaining syllabic throughout.

In the last fragment, the soprano finally transcends heightened speech into the world of song through a long melisma, but only at the expense of renouncing language. By suppressing linguistic communication there are no more barriers between the soprano and violin and they become a literal image of the intertwined snakes the text describes. This final achievement for song and companionship hardly closes the piece in a tone of optimism: it is suffused with unsettling connotations from an earlier fragment:

‘None sing as purely as those in deepest Hell; it is their singing that we take for the singing of angels.’

C Martin Suckling, composer martinsuckling.com

György Kurtág (b1926) Kafka Fragmente (1985 – 87)

Andrea Felvegi / EMB

Part 11 Die Guten gehn im gleichen

Schritt …2 Wie ein Weg im Herbst3 Verstecke4 Ruhelos5 Berceuse I6 Nimmermehr (Excommunicatio)7 ‘Wenn er mich immer frägt’8 Es zupfte mich jemand am Kleid9 Die Weissnäherinnen10 Szene am Bahnhof11 Sonntag, den 19 Juli 1910

(Berceuse II): Hommage à Jeney12 Meine Ohrmuschel …13 Einmal brach ich mir das Bein

(Chassidischer Tanz)14 Umpanzert15 Zwei Spazierstöcke (Authentisch-plagal)16 Keine Ruckkehr17 Stolz (1910/15 November, Zehn Uhr)18 Träumend hing die Blume (Hommage à Schumann)19 Nichts dergleichen

Part 21 Der wahre Weg (Hommage-message

à Pierre Boulez)

Part 31 Haben? Sein?2 Der Coitus als Bestrafung:

Canticulum MariaeMagdalenae3 Meine Festung4 Schmutzig bin ich, Milena …5 Elendes Leben (Double)6 Der begrenzte Kreis7 Ziel, Weg, Zögern8 So fest9 Verstecke (Double)10 Penetrant Judisch11 Staunend sahen wir das grosse Pferd12 Szene in der Elektrischen

(1910: ‘Ich bat im Traum die Tänzerin Eduardowa, sie möchte doch den Csárdás noch einmal tanzen …‘)

Part 41 Zu spät: 22 Oktober 19132 Eine lange Geschichte3 In memoriam Robert Klein4 Aus einem alten Notizbuch5 Leoparden6 In memoriam Joannis Pilinszky7 Wiederum, Wiederum8 Es blendete uns die Mondnacht

Franz Kafka, b. Prague, Bohemia (then belonging to Austria), July 3, 1883, d. June 3, 1924, has come to be one of the most influential writers of this century. Virtually unknown during his lifetime, the works of Kafka have since been recognized as symbolizing modern man’s anxiety-ridden and grotesque alienation in an unintelligible, hostile, or indifferent world. Kafka came from a middle-class Jewish family and grew up in the shadow of his domineering shopkeeper father, who impressed Kafka as an awesome patriarch. The feeling of impotence, even in his rebellion, was a syndrome that became a pervasive theme in his fiction. Kafka did well in the prestigious German high school in Prague and went on to receive a law degree in 1906. This allowed him to secure a livelihood that gave him time for writing, which he regarded as the essence – both blessing and curse – of his life. He soon found a position in the semipublic Workers’ Accident Insurance institution, where he remained a loyal and successful employee until – beginning in 1917 – tuberculosis forced him to take repeated sick leaves and finally, in 1922, to retire. Kafka spent half his time after 1917 in sanatoriums and health resorts, his tuberculosis of the lungs finally spreading to the larynx.

None of Kafka’s novels was printed during his lifetime, and it was only with reluctance that he published a fraction of his shorter fiction. This fiction included Meditation (1913; Eng. trans., 1949), a collection of short prose pieces; The Judgment (1913; Eng. trans., 1945), a long short story, written in 1912, which Kafka himself considered his decisive breakthrough (it tells of a rebellious son condemned to suicide by his father); and The Metamorphosis (1915; Eng. trans., 1961), dealing again with the outsider, a son who suffers the literal and symbolic transformation into a huge, repulsive, fatally

wounded insect. In the Penal Colony (1919; Eng. trans., 1961) is a parable of a torture machine and its operators and victims – equally applicable to a person’s inner sense of law, guilt, and retribution and to the age of World War I. The Country Doctor (1919; Eng. trans., 1946) was another collection of short prose. At the time of his death Kafka was also preparing A Hunger Artist (1924; Eng. trans., 1938), four stories centering on the artist’s inability either to negate or come to terms with life in the human community.

Contrary to Kafka’s halfhearted instruction that his unprinted manuscripts be destroyed after his death, his friend Max Brod set about publishing them and thus became the architect of his belated fame. The best known of the posthumous works are three fragmentary novels. The Trial (1925; Eng. trans., 1937) deals with a man persecuted and put to death by the inscrutable agencies of an unfathomable court of law. The Castle (1926; Eng. trans., 1930) describes the relentless but futile efforts of the protagonist to gain recognition from the mysterious authorities ruling (from their castle) the village where he wants to establish himself. Amerika (1927; Eng. trans., 1938), written early in Kafka’s career, portrays the inconclusive struggle of a young immigrant to gain a foothold in an alien, incomprehensible country. In all of these works, as indeed in most of Kafka’s mature prose, the lucid, concise style forms a striking contrast to the labyrinthine complexities, the anxiety-laden absurdities, and the powerfully oppressive symbols of torment and anomie that are the substance of the writer’s vision. Kafka’s fiction, somewhat like ink-blot tests, elicits and defeats attempts at conclusive explanation. Practically every school of modern criticism has produced a corpus of interpretations. Kafka’s own aphorisms,

Kafka-Fragments (1985 – 07)Text by Franz Kafka (1883 – 1924)

Franz Kafka (1883 – 1924)

however, may come the closest to offering a key.Bibliography: Brod, Max, Franz Kafka, 2d ed. (1960); Citati, Pietro, Kafka (1990); Flores, Angel, ed., The Kafka Debate (1977); Glatzer, N. N., The Loves of Franz Kafka (1985); Gray, Ronald, ed., Kafka: A Collection of Critical Essays (1962); Hayman, Ronald, Kafka (1982); Heller, Erich, Franz Kafka (1975); Karl, Frederick R., Franz Kafka: Representative Man (1992); Lawson, R. H., Franz Kafka (1987); Pawel, E., The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka (1984); Politzer, Heiny, Franz Kafka: Parable and Paradox (1962); Sokel, Walter H., Franz Kafka (1966); Udoff, Alan, ed., Kafka and the Contemporary Critical Performance (1987).

Text Copyright © 1993 Grolier Incorporated

Elizabeth Watts won the Rosenblatt Recital Song Prize at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition in 2007. In the same year she was awarded the Outstanding Young Artist Award at the Cannes MIDEM Classique Awards and the previous year the Kathleen Ferrier Award. She is currently an Artist in Residence at the Southbank Centre, and a former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist. Elizabeth has been awarded a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award (February 2011).

Her critically acclaimed debut recording of Schubert Lieder for SONY Red Seal was followed in 2011 by an equally acclaimed disc of Bach Cantatas for Harmonia Mundi, with whom she has an exclusive contract.

Current and future plans include Marzelline Fidelio for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Susanna Le Nozze di Figaro and Pamina Die Zauberflöte for Welsh National Opera; Almirena Rinaldo for Glyndebourne on Tour; Serpetta in Mozart La Finta Giardiniera with the Academy of Ancient Music and Richard Egarr; Mahler Symphony No 2 with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and Symphony No 2 with RTE Symphony Orchestra; Mozart Requiem with the Boston Handel and Haydn Society and Harry Christophers; Beethoven Symphony No 9 with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and John Storgårds; Kurtág Kafka Fragments for Soprano and Violin with Alexander Janicek and the Hebrides Ensemble and Mozart Exultate Jubilate with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Donald Runnicles.

Recent concerts have included Brahms Requiem with the LPO and Yannick Nezét-Séguin; Mahler Symphony No 4 with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Vasily Petrenko; Haydn The Seasons with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Olari Elts and Richard

Strauss Orchestral Lieder with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Dmitry Sitkovetsky, as well as performances with all the BBC Orchestras, The English Concert, City of Birmingham Symphony and Hallé Orchestras.

Operatic appearances have included Susanna Le Nozze di Figaro for Santa Fe Opera and WNO; Purcell King Arthur in Berkeley California and Handel’s L’Allegro Il Penseroso ed Il Moderato in London, both with the Mark Morris Dance Group, and Mandane in Thomas Arne Artaxerxes at the Linbury Studio/Royal Opera House which prompted Richard Morrisson to write in The Times “But the pick of the bunch is Elizabeth Watts, who musters buckets of passion and thrilling coloratura as Xerxes’s anguished daughter Mandane.”

As a recitalist Elizabeth has performed at the UK’s leading venues including Wigmore Hall, and the Purcell Room, London, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester and at the Aldeburgh and Cheltenham Festivals and future plans include returning to the Wigmore Hall and her debut recital at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam.

Elizabeth was a chorister at Norwich Cathedral and studied archaeology at Sheffield University before studying singing at the Royal College of Music in London. From 2005-2007 she was a member of English National Opera’s Young Singers Programme, where she appeared as Papagena Die Zauberflöte, Barbarina Figaro, Music and Hope in Monteverdi L’Orfeo and in Purcell King Arthur.

Elizabeth WattsSoprano

Alexander Janiczek, highly sought after as a director, soloist,  guest leader and chamber musician, was born in Salzburg and studied with Helmuth Zehetmair at the Salzburg Mozarteum and with Max Rostal, Nathan Milstein, Ruggiero Ricci and Dorothy Delay. He developed a close association with Sándor Végh and the Camerata Salzburg, whom he led and directed for many years. Alexander led the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and continues as director and soloist on the highly acclaimed series of Mozart Serenades for Linn Records. He is a guest director and records with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and has recently directed the COE in a new cd of Stravinsky for Linn.

He also appears with the Orchestra I Pomeriggi Musicali of Milan, the Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and explores 19th century performance practice with La Chambre Philharmonique under Emmanuel Krivine and the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées under Philippe Herreweghe.

As chamber musician and has appeared with Joshua Bell, Thomas Adés, Christian Zacharias, Mitsuko Uchida, Richard Goode, and Llŷr Williams who is now has a regular duo partner. Janizcek, with the Hebrides Ensemble, performed Bartok’s Solo Violin Sonata at the St.Magnus Festival and a recorded a cd of Messiaen, launched at London’s Wigmore Hall.Xxxxxxxxxx x

Born in Austria, director Rene Zisterer studied opera directing the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. Between 2000 and 2006 he served as Artistic Director and founder of the Eye Contact Theatre, where he led numerous premieres of works by Pirandello (“The Giants of the Mountain”), Thomas Bernhard

(“Appearances are deceptive”), Peter Turrini (“Alpine Glow”), and an acclaimed stage version of Robert Musil’s “The Man Without Properties”.

Rene has also toured his own productions to Metz, Strasbourg and Paris. As a freelance director he has worked in Germany, Italy and Austria. Most recently he staged Mozart’s “Magic Flute” at the Cologne Opera and Carl Orff’s “Die Kluge” at the Volksoper Vienna.

Since autumn 2010, René Zisterer board member of the Weiner Staats Oper.

Alexander Janiczek Violin

Rene Zisterer

Hebrides Ensemble is Scotland’s foremost contemporary music group, specialising in new, twentieth and twenty-first century chamber music, music theatre and chamber opera.

Led by the cellist and conductor William Conway and drawing upon the finest musicians within Scotland and Europe, Hebrides Ensemble is a flexible and intimate group, dedicated to presenting chamber music in new and interesting ways.

The ensemble tours frequently to venues as far-flung as St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, Orkney to the Wigmore Hall in London, performs at international festivals and broadcasts and records regularly.

Acclaimed for its imaginative and innovative programming and outstanding quality of performance, the group is a member of Re:New, a network of European contemporary music ensembles, which has at its heart the promotion and exchange of contemporary compositions throughout the Continent.

The Ensemble have been nominated within the Chamber Music category of the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards and have recently performed at the Aldeburgh Festival, Kings Place in London, and St. Magnus in Orkney, where they were ensemble in residence last Summer.

‘ gorgeous playing’ The Guardian

‘ remarkable’ The Herald

‘ one of the most innovative and thrilling ensembles in Europe’

The Scotsman

Upcoming PerformancesSeason 11/12

16th June Westbourne Music, Merchant House, Glasgow

15th July Music at Paxton, Paxton House

18th September Lammermuir Festival

6th November St. Andrew’s In the Square, Glasgow

7th November Eden Court, Inverness

8th November Queen’s Hall

9th November Crear

Rush Hour Concert Series 2012

2nd February St. George’s West Church

9th February Westbourne Music/ St. George’s West Church

Please subscribe to our newsletter by visiting hebridesensemble.com to hear more and to be the first to receive information about our future concerts.

Further Suggested Reading The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century is a voyage into the labyrinth of modern music, which remains an obscure world for most people. Author Alex Ross is music critic for the New Yorker, and this hugely acclaimed book on 20th Century music is an enjoyable and accessible route into music from the last century.

We also suggest taking the time to visit Alex’s blog, at: therestisnoise.com.

Funders and Supporters Hebrides Ensemble and ECAT s grateful to the following funders for their support: · Creative Scotland · The Binks Trust · Hope Scott Trust · Garrick Trust · Re: New · Lindsays Charitable TrustWith special thanks to Ann Hartree, Mr and Mrs XX Gordon and Mrs. Henrietta Simpson.

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General ManagerCaroline Winn

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Board of DirectorsProf. Chris KelnarBenjamin TwistWilliam ConwayJennifer MartinMartin SucklingPaul Jourdan

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