Booking
3 – 6 players
Memories of forgotten shadows
A musical journey through memories and shadows, under beautiful musical veils, in dreamlike moods and memories of a long-gone era and lost friendships, mixed with short expressive outbursts. A storytelling concert ...
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Cikada RBK
Rolf Borch – clarinet
Bendik Foss – viola
Kenneth Karlsson – piano
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Program:
Asbjørn Schaathun: Mirage - London 1985 (2017) 10'
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José M. Sánchez-Verdú: Teatro de sombras (2003) 5'
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José M. Sánchez-Verdú: Qasid I / II / III (2000-01) 5-18'
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Luigi Nono: Sofferte onde serene (1975-77) 14'
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Bent Sörensen: Schattenlinie (2010) 18'
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The program is intended as a suggestion and can be changed within the concept in cooperation with Cikada.
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Additional suggestions:
Bruno Mantovani: Da Roma (2004)12'
György Kurtág: Hommage a Robert Schumann, op 15d (1990) 6'
Bruno Mantovani: Une autre incandescence n° 1 (1998) adaptation de L'incandescence de la bruine (1998) 9'
Marco Stroppa: Hommage à Gy. K. (1997–2003, rev. 2007, 2013)18'
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The composers:
Luigi Nono (1924–1990) was an Italian avant-garde composer and is regarded as one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century. Asbjørn Schaatun (1961) is regarded as a pioneer in Norway with his work with computer-aided music. He has received numerous awards and was a founding member of Oslo Sinfonietta. José M. Sánchez-Verdú (1968) is a Spanish composer and conductor with a long track record. His compositions are performed by several major festivals and concert halls. Bent Sörensen (1958) is one of Denmark’s most prominent composers. His mature works create a sense of decay that is emotionally similar to viewing an aging visual artwork. There is a sense of compromised beauty.
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To set the mood
José M. Sánchez-Verdú:
Dream Images
This concert is kind of a fairytale in the night. It begins almost inaudibly, but beautifully with Filidei, before it breaks into a virtuosic adventure with Buene’s Landscape in Ruins. In Dream Images II a glass harmonica provides a steady drone in background, and it all ends at daybreak with Pesson’s red cock.
Cikada piano trio
Kenneth Karlsson – piano
Odd Hannisdal - violin
Torun Stavseng - cello
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Works:
Francesco Filidei - Corde Voute 8’
Eivind Buene - Landscape in Ruins 17’
Georges Crumb - Dream Images II 17’
Gérard Pesson - Ne pas oublier coq rouge dans le jour craquelé 12’
Morton Feldman
Cikada Feldman Trio
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Anne Karine Hauge – flute
Bjørn Rabben – percussion
Kenneth Karlsson – piano
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Works
Crippled Symmetry (1983) 90’
Why Patterns? (1978) 35’
For Philip Guston (1984) 240’
Palais de Mari (1986) piano solo 20'
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Additional suggestion – of another composer
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Klaus Lang: ann says "why?" (2009) 25’
Klaus Lang: sais. (2006) 55’
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"My whole generation was hung up on the 20-25-minute piece. It was our clock. We all got to know it, and how to handle it. As soon as you leave the 20-25-minute piece behind, in a one-movement work, different problems arise. Up to one hour you think about the form, but after an hour and a half its scale. Form is easy – just the division of things into parts. But scale is another matter. You have to have control of the piece – it requires a heightened kind of concentration. Before, my pieces were like objects; now, they’re like involving things." - Morton Feldman
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Kenneth Karlsson on Crippled Symmetry:
"Feldman has been a great inspiration for improvisational music, especially with Crippled Symmetry which is considered a bible or textbook of improvisation. He juxtaposes various musical patterns, inspired by patterns in Persian rugs – a big passion of his."
TOWARDS THE ISLAND
Cikada String Quartet, "Island tour"
Program:
J.S. Bach – from Kunst der Fuge 4’
Witold Lutoslawski – from String Quartet (1964) (excerpt) 3’
Georg Friedrich Haas – String Quartet No 5 (2007) 22’
Eivind Buene – from City Silence (2005-2008) (excerpt) 2’
John Cage – from String Quartet in Four Parts (1950) (part 1&4) 8’
Krzysztof Penderecki – String Quartet No 1 (1960) 8'
Elliott Carter – Two Fragments (1994) 4’
J.S. Bach – from Kunst der Fuge 4’
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"The Island" is an iconic metaphor that has inspired and fascinated people throughout history, from the legend of Atlantis via the famous painting "Toteninsel" by Böcklin and Tennysons "The lady of Shalott" to Victoria Hislops bestselling novel "The Island" (2005). The words of John Donne (1572-1631) "No man is an island, entire of itself" has become an established proverb.
The island reaches outwards in the geography, stretches the gravity field of the mainland, and defies the laws of nature. But in this lies the condition for communication: the island can only be reached by traveling. And the people living there cannot avoid meeting each other, and thus, they are forced to interact.
Referring to his music in the Frank Scheffer film "A labyrinth of Time", Elliott Carter says: "My own music is a picture of society as I hoped it would be, hope it will be. That is, there are a lot of individuals dealing with each other, sensitive to each other, cooperating and yet not losing their own individuality".
The string quartet is a perfect laboratory for studying how people relate to each other as individuals (or islands) and as a group. The predecessor can be said to be the four part polyphony of the renaissance era, where the interaction of the soprano, alto, tenor and bass parts found an inexhaustible richness of expression.
We have been inspired by the subject of the individual versus the collective, and have created a program where we use the physical room to explore the boundaries of musical interaction. We present works by leading composers such as Haas, Lutoslawski, Abrahamsen and Cage, framed by excerpts from Bachs "Die Kunst der Fuge".
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below
The island of Shalott
- Alfred Tennyson
Gérard Pesson
Program:
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Cassation (2003) 17’
cl, pno, string trio,
La vita è come l'albero di Natale (1992) 2’
vln, pno
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Nebenstück (1998) 9’
cl, string quartet
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Or
Mes béatitudes (1995) 15'
pno, vln, vla, vlc
Vexierbilder II (2003) 12'
pno
Ne pas oublier coq rouge dans jour craquelé (moments Proust) (2010) 13’
vln, vlc, pno
Gérard Pesson on Nebenstück:
Filtering Ballade opus 10 n°4 by Johannes Brahms for clarinet and string quartet.
In transcribing a ballade by Brahms for two instruments, I have tried to fix objectively the strange contamination that exists between musical invention and memory. The works that haunt us often crop up when we think we have plucked an idea from nowhere, and as they spring back they colour our obsessions, for, in art, research is a concomitant of unceasing archaeology.
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Ne pas oublier coq rouge dans jour craquelé (moments Proust) – do not forget the red cock in the cracked day – consists of several musical moments inspired by Marcel Proust’s sketch books. The work is a tribute to Vinteuil, a fictional composer figuring in À la recherche du temps perdu, but also a meditation over other mysteries in Proust. The phrase, and the work’s title, is some sort of memento that Proust wrote at the back of page 45 in volume 4 (1914–1917), and is linked both to a painting by Bruegel and the glowing septet of Vinteuil’s last opus.
Laurence Crane portrait concert: From the cabinet of John Vigani
Program:
Commission (2014) (Contrabass clarinet concerto to be performed by Rolf Borch and Cikada)
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English in Nordic Settings B (2011)
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Seven Short Pieces (2004)
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Four Miniatures (2003)
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​​​Estonia (2001)
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Erki Nool (1999)
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See Our Lake (1999)
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Sparling (1992)
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Trio (1996)
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8' bass fl, bass cl, pno
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12' bass fl, cl, pno, vln, vlc
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9' fl, perc, pno, vln
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12' fl, cl, vln, vlc
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3' fl, pno
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6' fl, cl, vln, vlc
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5' cl, pno
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5' bass fl, cl, pno
“I use simple and basic musical objects; common chords and intervals, arpeggios, drones, cadences, fragments of scales and melodies. The materials may seem familiar – perhaps even rather ordinary – but my aim is to find a fresh beauty in these objects by placing them in new structural and formal contexts and by using a surface texture that is highly reduced.”
Laurence Crane, 2013
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