First performances and World Premieres - 14.11.09

Ferens Art Gallery, Victoria Square, Hull, U.K.  

Doors open 18.30, Concert begins at 19.00 


Możliwość wejścia od godz. 18:30,

rozpoczęcie koncertu o 19:00

Wstęp: bezpłatny

first performances and world premieres

new music from Poland and the U.K.

pierwszą światową premierę prezedstawienia

nowej muzyki z Polski i Wielkiej Brytanii 

posłuchaj (listen)

Grzegorz Pieniek: Ruins of a Factory  for tape  (first U.K. performance) 

Alina Błońska: Nattflyg for tape (world premiere)

Nigel Bartram: New work for piano (world premiere) 

John Stead: Wast and Yordas (Lamina no.4)  4 ch. (world premiere)        

Paweł Mykietyn: Epifora for piano and tape (first U.K. performance) 

INTERVAL

Lidia Zielińska: Just too many Words  for tape  (first U.K. performance)

Stanisław Hansel: Variations on a Polish Christmas Carol for piano (world premiere) 

John Stead: PLAY 2.5 for harpsichord, synthesiser and computer (world premiere)

Performers: 

Stanisław Hansel: piano      

Nigel Bartram: piano and synthesiser      

John Stead: electronics and harpsichord      

(click on the highlighted works to listen)

Programme notes

Grzegorz Pieniek:

Ruins of a Factory for tape (2007)*

The piece was inspired by the postindustrial landscapes of Lodz, a city sometimes called the Polish Manchester. The place lively developing in 19th century is now marked by old, abandoned factories, more and more deteriorating with time. Looking at those squalid relics of the past one can spin diverse tales about their history and fall, creating his own urban legends. Those rusting and eroding buildings, slowly taken over by nature, are a symbol of transience, relentless passage of time and also twilight of certain realms or ideas allowing new realities to born.

The sound material of the piece was gained from pre-recorded samples comprising noises made by household appliances, furniture, kitchen utensils etc., transformed and mixed loosing their original character.Especially important for me was the manipulation with timbre,sound consistency (by e.g. appropriate reverb adjustment) and space – both in left-right and front-rear panorama.

Duration: 3‘ 45”

G.P.

Nigel Bartram:

Kolding for pinao (2009) **

"On a recent visit to Kolding, in Denmark I was struck by the peaceful tranquility of a boathouse by a fjord. However this is also a very active place with much activity on the water during the Summer months. Two key ideas reflect these opposing images and are developed throughout"

Duration: 5”

N.B.

Alina Blonska:

Nattflyg (2007 - 8) **

Polish composer born in 1974. She studied composition at the Karol Lipinski Academy of Music in Wroc_aw (Poland) under Prof. Granyna Pstroko_ska-Nawratil, where she was graduated with honours. She also studied electronic music with Stanis_aw Krupowicz.Between 1998 and 2002 she took part in many international courses of composition in Poland and Spain organized with the participation of Cristóbal Halffter, Mauricio Sotelo, Beat Furrer, Toshio Hosokawa, Bernard Parmegiani, François Bayle, Louis Andriessen, Marta Ptaszy_ska, Mario Lavista and many others.

Nattflyg for tape was composed between 2007 and 2008 at LIEM –Laboratorio de Informática y Electrónica Musical- of CDMC in Madrid (Centro para la Difusión de la Música Contemporánea). It was produced in ProTools and its source were instrumental samples.

Nattflyg is a Swedish word and it means “nocturnal flight”, which tries to reflect the atmosphere of the composition.

Duration: ca. 6’ 10“

A.B.

John Stead:

Wast and Yordas - quadraphonic sound (2009) **

This piece is the third of 6 lamina, or surface which comprise the main sound part of Lux Lamina, a son et lumiere to be performed in 2010. This piece creates a spacious mobile liquid environment using water sounds from Yordas cave in Deepdale, Yorkshire, and Wast Water lake in the Lake District.

Duration: 6‘ 43”

J.S.

Powel Mytkietyn:

Epifora for paino and tape (1996) *

Composer and clarinetist; born 20 May 1971 in Olawa. Mykietyn studied composition under Wlodzimierz Kotonski at the Academy of Music in Warsaw, graduating in 1997. As early as 1990 Mykietyn took second prize in the Andrzej Krzanowski Composing Competition. His piece titled 3 FOR 13 for 13 performers (1994), commissioned by Polish Radio, won him first prize in the young composers’ category during the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in Paris in 1995. In 1996 his EPIFORA / EPIPHORA for piano and audio tape (1996), also commissioned by Polish Radio, took the first prize in the young composers’ category at the UNESCO 4th International Rostrum of Electro-acoustic Music in Amsterdam and was among the compositions to receive an honorable mention in the open category.

Duration: ca. 20’

P.M.

Lidia Zielinska:

Just too Many Words for tape (2001) *

JUST TOO MANY WORDS was born from the excess of words in the TV news and comments. How and to such extent it is worth anaesthetising yourself to keep away from the streams of words and at the same time not to miss anything important from the current moment? 

 None of the events during the day I was recording the materials for my piece, had any importance for this world’s fate, there were an ordinary journalist food, a matter to fill in an air time, thus, an empty talking only. I was not under any historical pressure, so I could handle unceremonious with the recorded materials. 

In this piece there is no place for a silence – from the ‘ideological’ (subject of the piece) but also technical reasons. The only moments of silence show that silence is also dirty, seems to be a second-hand product, which discloses an information noise pollution of each piece of environment. For me the only reasonable compositional procedure not to bore the audience was to build the whole piece from the planes of different textures, referring to different ways of speech perception. 

Awarded at emsPrize 2001 contest for text-sound composition (Stockholm).

Duration: 10‘ 00”

L.Z.

Stanislaw Hansel:

Variations on a Polish Christmas Carol for piano (2009) **

The opening 'theme' is itself a variation since the notes of the tune have been separated out and surrounded by brief sequential passages  causing the notes of the tune to act as signals.  The carol is the same one that Chopin used in his first Scherzo and is known as 'Lulajze, Jezuniu'. There follow several variations each trying to suggest the tune - sometimes ion canon or with other sequential devices and sometimes with the addition of new material.

Duration: ca. 8’

S.H.

John Stead:

Play 2.5 for harpsichord, synthesiser and computer (2009) **

This world premiere performance is dedicated to Theresa Sauer.

In response to the recent publication of the graphic score for  PLAY 2 (1988) in the Notations 21 collection by the musicologist Theresa Sauer, I decided to compose a palimpsest of it as PLAY 2.5. In this version the use of the Yamaha Rex 50 device in the original is replaced and considerably developed using live computer transformations, which add a meta-score to the visual graphics. In PLAY 2.5, the synthesiser is also further incorporated by being subjected to transformations and spatialisation, as well as the harpsichord. The graphic notation acts as a mnemonic for previously rehearsed decisions and strategies. The work is technically demanding and is concerned with play in many forms - playing and instrument: techniques, styles, etc ... a game: strategies, tactics, etc... and of course fun!

Structurally the piece is in three sections, played without a break. Each section begins with quiet environments which are explored and developed into powerful sound masses.

Duration: 28’ 30”

J.S.

EAE would like to thank all our friends and supporters in

enabling this concert to take place. We especially would like

to thank Aneta Weigelt for translating the texts and

Tony Jennings of Tega Ltd., for his continued kindness and

support.

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