Hafliði Hallgrímsson: Metamorphoses

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DCD34059

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The Cold Dancer: Contemporary String Quartets from Scotland Edinburgh Quartet (DCD34038)

Notes from a Diary for viola and piano, Op. 33 (2005) 1. Andante – larghetto – tempo primo

[5.51]

2. Andante

[1.08]

3. Larghetto – largo – larghetto – largo

[3.18]

4. Larghetto

[1.56]

5. Largo

[1.34]

6. Andante

[2.26]

7.

Largo

Rich and personal contributions to the quartet tradition from four contemporary Scottish composing voices, ranging from the lyrical profundity of Kenneth Dempster’s meditation on a George Mackay Brown poem to a characteristically idiosyncratic and yet songful work

by Judith Weir. Under their new leader Charles Mutter, the Edinburgh Quartet deliver blazing, committed performances celebrating the immense variety and vitality of work on offer. ‘…the Edinburgh Quartet has never played better. It’s nothing less than a landmark’ – The Herald, February 2007

[3.31]

8. Larghetto – allegro – larghetto – allegro – larghetto

[2.38]

9. Larghetto

[2.39]

10. Largo

[1.49]

11. Largo

[2.57]

12. Larghetto – andante – larghetto – andante – larghetto – andante – larghetto

[2.49]

Giles Swayne: Music for cello and piano Robert Irvine, cello Fali Pavri, piano (DCD34073) Giles Swayne’s works for cello exhibit an astonishing array of moods and colours. The restless beauty of Four Lyrical Pieces and strident romanticism of the Sonata offer remarkable counterpoint to his Suite for solo cello. Canto seduces us with its symbiotic blend of African traditional and Western art music.

‘Swayne pushes at the boundaries’ – The Times, October 2006

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New Music on Delphian Eddie McGuire: Music for flute, guitar and piano Nancy Ruffer, flute and piccolo Abigail James, guitar Dominic Saunders, piano (DCD34029) Over the past 40 years, Eddie McGuire, British Composer Award Winner and Creative Scotland Award Winner, has developed a compositional style that is as diverse as it is concentrated. This disc surveys a selection of his solo and chamber works, written for his home instruments, flute, guitar, and piano. The writing, whilst embracing tonality, focuses on texture and aspects of colour, drawing on a myriad folk influences. At once bold and playful, the listener cannot help be drawn in to McGuire’s evocative sound-world. ‘… this is quite simply beautiful music … Performances are excellent, the overall playing as expressive as the music itself requires; Delphian’s sound is spot-on’ – Gramophone Editor’s Choice, Awards Edition 2006 Robert Crawford: Music for piano and strings Edinburgh Quartet Nicholas Ashton, piano (DCD34055) The elder statesman in Scotland’s music scene, Robert Crawford has throughout his life lavished intense care over every one of his compositions. The Edinburgh Quartet and pianist Nicholas Ashton are intimately acquainted with Crawford’s music and mirror the composer’s attention to detail in a long overdue survey of this lovingly-crafted music.

‘Beautifully-crafted music’ – The Herald, February 2005

13. Andante

[1.21]

14. Largo

[2.20]

15. Largo

[2.57]

Seven Epigrams for violin and cello, Op. 23 (1996) 16. A languorous window stands white (Homage to Boris Pasternak)

[3.22]

17. Flight

[3.36]

18. The captive spirit (Homage to Marina Tsvetayeva)

[3.40]

19. Responsorium (Homage to Nadezhda Mandelshtam)

[2.44]

20. Night train (Homage to D. Shostakowich)

[2.59]

21. Mystical navigation (Homage to Anna Akhmatova)

[3.28]

22. And a man left his house (Homage to Daniil Kharms)

[2.22]

23. Metamorphoses for piano trio, Op. 16 (1994)

[14.37]

Total playing time

[73.04]

Recorded on the 26 April 2007 at St Mary’s Parish Church, Haddington, Scotland Producer: Paul Baxter Engineer: Adam Binks 24-Bit digital editing: Adam Binks 24-Bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter Design: Drew Padrutt

Piano: Steinway Model B, serial number 455808 (1978), prepared by Norman W. Motion, Consultant to Steinway & Sons Photography © Delphian Records Ltd Photograph editing: Dr Raymond Parks Cover image by Hafliði Hallgrímsson

P 2008 Delphian Records Ltd © 2008 Delphian Records Ltd www.delphianrecords.co.uk

This recording was produced with assistance from Nordicon.

With thanks to Morag & Richard Michael and Tom & Bernie Morgan.

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‘The best thing is not to say a word but just to write and play and let people listen.’

Haflidi Hallgrímsson’s initial response when asked to talk about his music reflects the composer himself: enigmatic, yet eloquent, inscrutable and self contained. It is a personality that finds voice in his highly individual music. Not for Hallgrímsson the bombastic statement or the needlessly grandiose gesture. ‘Loud music is not of interest to me,’ he says; ‘I think if you’re going to be very loud then you have to say something worthwhile – and that is not so easy.’

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where he grew up doubtless influencing his visual appreciation of the world. His is not specifically the music of an Icelandic composer, however; ‘I don’t consider myself as Icelandic but primarily as a human being,’ he says. ‘A northerner I suppose, a northern European even, but to be nationalistic goes against the grain completely.’

One of Hallgrímsson’s earliest musical influences was his mother, whom he describes as ‘very sensitive, very musical’. She sang in various local choirs and also sharpened her son’s musical appreciation by pointing out when any particularly beautiful music was Instead Hallgrímsson writes exquisitely being played on the radio. ‘The violin above all crafted, jewel-like pieces, often short and, yes, was the instrument she loved the most,’ recalls predominantly quiet. Even in larger-scale works Hallgrímsson; ‘through her I heard all the great (there has been one symphony to date) his violinists: Oistrakh, Heifetz, Szigeti.’ music invites the listener in rather than forcing itself on an audience. It will perhaps not come The young Hallgrímsson wanted to become a as a surprise to those who know Hallgrímsson’s violinist but it wasn’t possible; his father had output that this composer is also a painter; died when he was nine and his mother didn’t his music seems to speak of an aesthetic have the money to buy an instrument or pay for understanding that goes beyond the score to lessons. Instead, he was given the opportunity the canvas. to learn the cello at the local music school, which had been given an instrument. ‘I think Hallgrímsson’s artistic identity was shaped by I would have been happier as a violinist,’ he his homeland; the landscape around the small reflects; ‘my obsession with clarity and agility town of Akureyri on the north coast of Iceland was never realised on the cello, the lower

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Fidelio Trio Darragh Morgan violin Robin Michael cello Mary Dullea piano

College of Music and Drama, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Royal Holloway University of London and the University of Ulster.

In 2006 they were also ensemble-in-residence at both the Irish Composition Summer School and CoMA Summer School.

Following their South Bank debut at the Purcell Room, the Fidelio Trio have become highly sought after performers of contemporary music, Among the many premieres the trio have performing throughout Europe, Asia and South given are works by Michael Nyman, Salvatore Africa as well as broadcasting regularly for BBC Sciarrino, Toshio Hosokawa, Edison Denisov, Radio 3. The trio are also recipients of prominent Toru Takemitsu, Howard Skempton, Kevin Volans awards from PRSF, the Arts Council of Ireland and and Beat Furrer. They have also commissioned a are regular artists with Music Network performing number of important new works for piano trio by throughout Ireland.

Deirdre Gribbin, Rolf Hind, Donnacha Dennehy, Ed Bennett and Jonathan Powell. Recent recording As part of their busy schedule the trio have projects have included a portrait of Joe Cutler for appeared at FuseLeeds; the Reggello Festival; NMC and a disc of piano trios by Irish composers West Cork Music; Belfast Festival at Queens; Deirdre Gribbin, Ed Bennett, Donnacha Dennehy Royal Opera House, London; and Casa da Musica, and Kevin Volans (NMC D147).

Porto. Since 2005 the trio have enjoyed a close working relationship with the historic Wilton’s An important other dimension to the Fidelio Music Hall, London where they are artists-inTrio’s constantly expanding repertoire is their residence, and in 2006 the trio undertook a pop archive, which includes works inspired prestigious Aldeburgh residency.

by Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Cocteau Twins, Brecker Brothers, Miles Davis and Joni Mitchell.

The Fidelio Trio have given many composition A recording of pop-influenced works is to be workshops and performance masterclasses at a released soon on their own FT Label. number of higher education institutions, including Birmingham Conservatoire, the Royal Welsh www.fideliotrio.com

register always worried me because of its muddy sound.’

It was here that he began to have doubts about pursuing a career as a cellist. ‘I wanted to be a virtuoso cellist but I realised this was not Whatever his reservations about the cello, going to happen,’ he says. It was also in Rome Hallgrímsson’s lifelong affinity with string that he began to expand his artistic horizons, instruments, reflected in this recording, has getting to know visual artists studying in the city always been apparent in his own music. ‘One and himself becoming interested in painting, rule I’ve always kept to is that I only write enjoying ‘the freedom to do something that music that fits in with what I want to do,’ he was entirely one’s own rather than performing says. ‘I love writing for string instruments and other people’s work.’ The urge to compose ensembles; being a string player it comes more was also there, although he resisted its lure; or less naturally.’ ‘composing seemed unattractive to me because of the loneliness, the lack of money and the Though the cello eventually became difficulty in getting performances,’ he says.

Hallgrímsson’s instrument, his first cello lessons with an alcoholic Norwegian violin Gradually Hallgrímsson developed his career teacher were not a huge success. ‘He didn’t as a freelance cellist with a small quantity of know how to teach the cello and anyway composition on the side. It was an arrangement I didn’t understand what he was saying,’ that proved increasingly unsatisfactory though Hallgrímsson recalls. He soon stopped playing it wasn’t until he was in his early 40s that and didn’t take up the instrument again until he he made the break and become a full-time was seventeen and went to the music school in composer, ensuring there was no going back Reykjavik, where he had to begin again almost by selling his prized cello ‘I needed to find out if from scratch. Despite this delay he progressed there was any music in me or not,’ he says. quickly, spending four years at the music school and subsequently going to the Accademia By this time, Hallgrímsson was living with his Santa Cecilia in Rome to continue his studies. family in Edinburgh, having moved from London five years earlier to become the first full-time principal cellist of the recently formed Scottish

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Matthew Jones Chamber Orchestra. The Scottish capital, which has been his home ever since, was the first foreign city he ever saw, when as a teenager bound for a youth orchestra in Sweden the ship taking him from Iceland to Copenhagen called in at Leith. ‘Edinburgh seemed an incredibly romantic place; very dark, dirty and smoky but romantic nevertheless,’ he says. ‘I never forgot it and when I was working in London it kind of drew me back.’

orchestra was on tour he would always try to get out, climb a hill and have a good view,’ he remembers. ‘The sense of space and calmness in the work comes from that.’

The title, which for a musician almost inevitably evokes Richard Strauss’ monumental wartime memorial work for strings, Metamorphosen, grew out of the resonance of memory and of the idea of the continuous transformation of material The earliest of the pieces recorded here throughout the piece. Hallgrímsson says reflects Hallgrímsson’s links with Scotland. The that everything in the work comes from the piano trio Metamorphoses (1994) was written opening bars; the material being gradually as a memorial for the violinist John Tunnell and gently transformed as the music the founder leader of the Scottish Chamber progresses. The piece unfolds slowly and Orchestra until his sudden and untimely death. quietly, a gesture of inward-looking personal The piece was commissioned by the Young remembrance rather than a public memorial.

Musicians’ Trust set up by Tunnell’s widow The only explicitly extrovert moment arrives Wendy and was written for the Kalichsteinin the final third of the piece where a unison Laredo-Robinson trio of violinist Jaime Laredo, passage for violin and cello underpinned by his cellist wife Sharon Robinson and pianist tolling piano chords grows louder and ever Joseph Kalichstein, all of whom had known more insistent until it reaches a mournful, Tunnell well. wailing climax which just as abruptly ceases.

It’s a section that Hallgrímsson likens to Hallgrímsson drew on his own memories of the the Via Dolorosa ‘someone struggling along violinist in writing this single-movement work. and reaching a certain highpoint then just ‘He was very keen on walking in the hills; when withering away.’ we came to a nice town somewhere when the

Winner of the prize for the most promising British entrant in the 2003 Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition, Matthew Jones’s recent recital and chamber music schedule has included performances in the Wigmore Hall; Carnegie Hall; Purcell Room; St Martin-inthe-Fields; St John’s, Smith Square; St David’s Hall, Cardiff; the CBSO centre, Birmingham; the Wales Millennium Centre and live on BBC Radio 3. Recent performances abroad include China, Japan, Australia and South America as well as throughout Europe.

Matthew was born in Swansea and studied mathematics at the Universities of Warwick and Bologna, Italy, graduating with one of the highest first class marks of his year. He was then awarded a Senior Exhibition to study at the Royal College of Music, and began to study privately with Rivka Golani. He was awarded the first ever Walton fellowship from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in 2007.

Matthew formed The Bridge Duo with pianist Michael Hampton in 2002, and together they have performed around the world to wide

critical acclaim, as well as releasing a disc of English viola music attracting further praise.

Matthew is also violist with The Badke String Quartet and The Debussy Ensemble.

As a qualified teacher of the Alexander Technique and Kundalini Yoga, Matthew’s holistic approach to music-making has led to great demand for his teaching and workshops, which he runs throughout Europe in English, Italian and French. His extensive teaching experience includes work at the Royal College of Music, Trinity College of Music, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and Berklee School of Music in Boston. Matthew was also invited by Nobuko Imai to teach at the Viola Space Japan 2006 Festival in Tokyo.

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Like the Seven Epigrams, the most recent work the visit no more than a place and an event that on this recording has a literary connection. The sparked the compositional process. germ of the idea for Notes from a Diary (2005) was planted when Hallgrímsson visited the Notes from a Diary is a large picture made up Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam, the house of many smaller interrelated ones. Hallgrímsson where she and her family hid from the Nazis describes it as opening with the sound of a bell for over two years during the Second World being struck, a sound which then reverberates War until they were betrayed. As he himself throughout the fifteen short movements. There describes it, the place itself was something are many ideas connected with resonance, of a let down. ‘As so often in buildings where especially the use of piano pedal sometimes something momentous happened it seemed for an entire movement to make what the rather unreal. Going into a house where a composer terms sonic halos. ‘The sounds hang famous artist lived always turns out to be in the air for a long time taking on a certain disappointing because it’s like a shell; the colour as they disintegrate,’ he says. The piece real thing isn’t there. I was in Anne Frank’s is also an exercise in variation; though much of house and I wasn’t feeling anything at all the basic material is the same, Hallgrímsson when suddenly a bell was struck, giving me is constantly reworking it in different ways, something of a shock.’ seeking endless variety from limited means.

Nothing happened at the time, but a couple of © 2008 Rowena Smith days later back home in Edinburgh Hallgrímsson started working on a commission from Rowena Smith lectures and writes on music and is a Icelandic viola player Thórunn Ósk Marinósdóttir freelance contributor to various publications including when the memory of that bell returned and The Guardian and The Herald. he found himself being drawn to it. From this beginning he created what he describes as his own diary of sounds stemming from that moment in the museum. The connection with Anne Frank’s own diary is remote, intangible;

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If Metamorphoses is a private memorial to a but it gives it a different flavour,’ he explains. friend and colleague then the Seven Epigrams ‘This piece ended up being very serious for violin and cello represents a collective music, but then I prefer serious music.’ More testimony to an entire generation of Soviet remarkable given the subject matter is that it artists. The inspiration behind the work was is also beautiful music. It is atmospheric and Boris Pasternak’s autobiographical sketch An frequently has a yearning quality but is seldom Essay in Autobiography which first appeared harsh or angry. ‘But then,’ says Hallgrímsson, in Icelandic translation in 1964 and made a ‘I wasn’t trying to describe individual events in huge impression on the young Hallgrímsson. It which these artists were involved, rather just was, he says, the book that really sparked his remembering these people who seem to have interest in poetry and introduced him to figures become almost a part of my inner life.’ such as Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam and Marina Tsvetayeva. ‘I began to look them The first of the seven movements pays up and I became fascinated with this world homage to Pasternak himself, the title not a that Pasternak describes,’ he says. The Soviet direct quotation but Hallgrímsson imagining poets of the era of the Stalinist terror continue the writer’s environment in his country house to inspire Hallgrímsson; particularly because of and his way of describing nature. The following the way they seemed to live their lives so fully movements are dedicated to poets Osip in the face of the terrible suffering they endured Mandelstam and Marina Tsvetayeva, writer because of their chosen path.

Nadezhda Mandelstam (Osip’s wife), composer Dmitri Shostakovich, poet Anna Akhmatova When Hallgrímsson was asked by his violinist and finally the absurdist writer Daniil Kharms, friend Terje Tønnesen, the director of the who was imprisoned in a Leningrad mental Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, to write a violin asylum where he died of starvation during and cello duo for himself and his recital partner the Nazi siege of the city. Hallgrímsson Aage Kvalbein, he found himself writing a has subsequently used his work in a more series of short pieces in memory of these great substantial work, the music theatre piece Die Soviet artists and thinkers. ‘I don’t need a poem Wält der Zwischenfälle, which was premiered or a name, or someone’s death to write music, in Lübeck in 2004.

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