Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953)
Music for Small Orchestra (1926)
Rissolty, Rossolty for Orchestra (1939)
George Lewis (*1952)
Memex for Orchestra (2014)
Charles Ives (1874-1954)
Symphony No. 4 for Chorus and Orchestra (1898-1916, rev. 1921-25)
BALDUR BRÖNNIMANN, DIRECTOR
Laurent Zufferey, Director
Ludovic Van Hellemont, piano
BASEL BACH CHOIR (Director: Joachim Krause)
Visionary music from the USA not only brings the season of the Basel Sinfonietta to a close, but also the collaboration with Principal Conductor Baldur Brönnimann, who has shaped the orchestra into a first-class ensemble for contemporary music.
The American composer Ruth Crawford Seeger was a leading figure of the Ultra-Modernists, an avant-garde movement following in the footsteps of Charles Ives. Her music for small orchestra is masterfully crafted. The short orchestral piece "Rissolty Rossolty" originates from one of her transcriptions of American folk music.
For his orchestral work "Memex," the American composer George Lewis was inspired by a 1945 article by the engineer Vannevar Bush. In it, Bush described the Memex (Memory Extender) as a device in which a person could "store all their books, records, and communications." The Memex thought experiment was a source of inspiration for the hypertext concept, which in turn led to the invention of the World Wide Web.
If there were a competition for the most outlandish work in music history, Charles Ives's Fourth Symphony would be a top contender: a choir without words, a deliberately out-of-tune piano, and a string ensemble positioned as far away from the orchestra as possible. In this seminal work, Ives draws a conclusion from his musical ideas and sets high interpretive standards, for example, through the simultaneous layering of instrumental groups playing in different meters and tempi.
Concert introduction 6:15 pm
Swiss premiere;
program subject to change.
