THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY College of Music presents
“Kurtág, Psathas, and FSU Composers”
Celebrating the 100th Birthday of György Kurtág
Polymorphia
FSU New Music Ensemble
Liliya Ugay, Director
Emelia Ulrich, Graduate Assistant with Guest Composer John Psathas and the Winners of Polymorphia’s FSU Call for Scores
Saturday, April 18, 2026 7:30 p.m. | Opperman Music Hall
Ametist and Hues of Gold
Sarah Ward, oboe and English Horn
Jaxon Stewart, clarinet; Charlotte MacDonald, bass clarinet
Kaeden Parks, saxophone; Hannah Farmer, bassoon
Brian Junttila, conductor
Wijsmuller
Ridge Echoes (2025)
Claire Park, flute; Sarah Ward, oboe
Jarriel Santiago Ruperto, clarinet; Hannah Farmer, bassoon; Eric On, horn
Thomas Roggio, conductor
Brian Junttila (b. 1997)
Ian Schwalbe (b. 2001)
Yida Wang
I. Dusk Wind (b. 1999)
II. Dawn Warblers
Necklace Songs (2025)
Claire Park, flute; Emelia Ulrich, viola; Param Mehta, cello
Artur Akshelyan (b. 1984)
Cecilia Malley, soprano
Kaeden Parks, saxophone; Connor Altagen, trombone
Margaret Anne Altagen, harp; Elizabeth Grice, piano
Caleb Duden, double bass; Nicholas Montoya, percussion
Liliya Ugay, conductor
Please refrain from talking, entering, or exiting during performances. Food and drink are prohibited in all concert halls. Recording or broadcasting of the concert by any means, including the use of digital cameras, cell phones, or other devices is expressly forbidden. Please deactivate all portable electronic devices including watches, cell phones, pagers, hand-held gaming devices or other electronic equipment that may distract the audience or performers.
Recording Notice: This performance may be recorded. Please note that members of the audience may at times be included in this process. By attending this performance you consent to have your image or likeness appear in any live or recorded video or other transmission or reproduction made in conjunction to the performance.
Florida State University provides accommodations for persons with disabilities. Please notify the College of Music at (850) 644-3424 at least five working days prior to a musical event to request accommodation for disability or alternative program format.
The Unknown Wheel (2024)
Kathryn Lang, flute; Isabelle Scott, harp; Jacob Grice, viola
Hommage à Robert Schumann, Op. 15/d (1975-1990)
March Seok (b. 2001)
György Kurtág
Vivo (merkwürdige Pairouetten des Kapellmeisters Johannes Kreisler) (The strange (b. 1926) pirouettings of music director Johannes Kreisler)
Molto semplice piano e legato (E[usebius]: der begrenzte kreis ist rein (Eusebius: the limited circle is pure)
Feroce agitation (...und wieder zuckt es schemerzlich F[lorestan] um die Lippen) (...and again it jerks Florestan painfully around the lips)
Calmo scorrevole (Felhó valék, már süt a nap) (I was a cloud, the sun is shining)
Presto (In der nacht) (In the night)
Adagio poco andante (Abschied: “Meister Raro entdeckt Guillaume de Machaut”) (Farewell: “Master Raro discovers Guillaume de Machaut”)
Charlotte MacDonald, clarinet; Maya Johnson, viola; Thong Truong, piano
Corybas (2011)
Emelia Ulrich, violin; Param Mehta, cello; Daniel Farrias, piano
John Psathas (b. 1966)
Junttila:
Amethyst and Hues of Gold is a short piece for standard reed quintet instrumentation. It begins with a slow solo English Horn introduction, moves into a somewhat faster, rhythmically interlocking section, and concludes like the beginning. It doesn’t have traditionally programmatic elements, but it does experiment with unique harmonies in a formal route.
– Brian Junttila
Schwalbe: Wijsmuller
Born in the Netherlands in 1896, Geertruida Wijsmuller spent her life rescuing over 10,00 Jewish children from Nazi German oppression. She grew up with a family of compassionate working-class parents, and began working at a young age. After meeting her husband and deciding against having children, Wijsmuller took up a life of social work. In 1938, the infamous Kristallnacht - a night during which Germans nation-wide ransacked Jewish homes and businesses - led Geertruida to meet a Jewish boy who was lost in the woods, and to help him sneak across the border. After this experience, Wijsmuller began to use her status as a non-Jewish person and her brilliant wit to speak with Nazi soldiers and to convince them to allow Jewish children to leave the country by train. From then until the beginning of World War II, she organized trains called Kindertransports to bring hundreds of children from Germany to both the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. While the conditions in such situations were not desirable, they were far better than the environment the children would have been left in after the outbreak of the war. Tensions in Europe continued to rise, but Wijsmuller – fueled by compassion - kept negotiating with Nazis to maintain the Kindertransports for as long as possible. Even after the trains were forcibly shut down, Wijsmuller continued to provide children with food and medicine throughout the rest of the war. This piece is a programmatic telling of the most meaningful aspects of Wijsmuller’s life during the war.
– Ian Schwalbe
Ridge Echoes is a two-movement piece that captures the soundscape of valleys and mountains. The first movement centers on the wind, using extended techniques to create shifting, textured sonorities, while the second movement is shaped by the calls of birds. Across the work, the pentatonic scale serves as the core material, explored and transformed through the language of Western contemporary music.
–
Yida Wang
Akshelyan: Necklace of Songs
Necklace of Songs
text from Unending Love by Rabindranath Tagore (excerpt)
“I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times… In life after life, in age after age, forever. My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs, That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms, In life after life, in age after age, forever.”
The Unknown Wheel (2024) for Flute, Viola, and Harp tells a story of two imaginary wheels that roll in peace, until a previously unnoticed disturbance-the “Unknown Wheel”-comes in to disrupt them. Despite the disturbance, the two wheels remain steady, eventually regaining their peace. The piece concludes with a tonal finale, signaling the two wheels’ persistent pursuit of a brighter future.
The two wheels could represent any pair: a couple, friends, or even two countries. Similarly, the unknown wheel stands for any disturbances in life. As the world is imperfect, unexpected disturbances can attack and shake us wherever and whenever. And this may make us falter and feel as though everything is falling apart. But eventually, peace returns, like the scab after an injury. This cyclical dance between stability and instability, I believe, must be the underlying driver of the world. The Unknown Wheel is dedicated to all those who rise again, even when momentarily brought down by life’s disruptions.
–
March Seok
Born into a Hungarian Jewish family in northern Romania, Kurtág moved to Budapest in 1946 when he was twenty. The year after the 1956 uprising, he spent in Paris ostensibly to study with Messiaen and Milhaud, but in fact being psychoanalysed by Marianne Stein and “self-purifying” himself by eating only rice and performing angular gymnastics. He copied out Webern scores and made stick figures out of matches, dust-balls and cigarette butts, read Kafka’s Metamorphosis and felt as a “cockroach striving to change into a human being, seeking light and purity”. He returned to Budapest, discarded his previous compositions and produced his “Opus 1,” a string quartet dedicated to Stein.
Although Kurtág’s style is distinctively his own, many of his compositions allude eclectically to others: Hommage à Nancy Sinatra, Homage to Tchaikovsky, In Memory of a Just Person, Omaggio a Luigi Nono and tonight’s piece, Hommage à Robert Schumann, which is based on Märchenerzählungen and uses the same instrumentation. Kurtág wrote the first movement in 1975 and completed it in1990.
The movements of this short (10 minute) work refer to Schumann’s alter egos Florestan, Eusebius, and Meister Raro and also in the first movement to Johannes Kreisler, a fictional moody, anti-social composer, who was the alter ego of the novelist E T A Hoffmann, and who in turn inspired Schumann’s Kreisleriana. The first five movements are, as with Webern, very short. The longer last movement refers to Guillaume de Machaut, a 14th century poet and
composer who was especially influential in the development of isorhythmic motets (in which a repeating rhythm helps to unify a piece). Here the three players independently repeat their own rhythmic pattern, the piano strictly, the other two parts gradually condensing their rhythms. Does Meister Raro reconcile them?
– University of Sussex - Unknown author
Psathas: Corybas
Corybas, a dynamic, willful, and playful piano trio was commissioned by Ian Graham as a birthday gift for his wife Agi Lehar-Graham, and in grateful recognition of the New Zealand Chamber Soloists (NZCS) Piano Trio – Katherine Austin, Lara Hall and James Tennant. It’s in stark contrast to the calmer, more serene, Aegean its companion work which can be thought of as its postlude. As a composer, it was an intriguing situation to consider the influence of the work being a gift. So, I reached out to Ian for a reference point and discovered Aggie’s interest in the Corybas flower. The name originates from the helmet-shaped flowers, resembling the headgear worn by the dancers of Corybas in Ancient Greece. The lively odd-metered rhythmic patterns in Corybas echo the vibrant movements of the dancers in Eastern European traditions, capturing their spirit and energy. An exciting aspect of writing Corybas was getting my head around a particular dance groove found in Macedonia, which is in 17/8. This is divided into measures of 7/8, 6/8, and 4/8. It’s a fantastic groove but it takes some work to internalise it. I had to play with this groove in a way that would keep performers from going crazy because of the amount of variation and syncopation that’s layered on top the 17/8 meter. Otherwise the material would be stressful and unsatisfying to play instead of exciting. I’m very happy about Corybas because I think I got the balance right in this respect. Once performers internalise the underlying meter I see a transformation take place and they love to play it. Later on I found out the name of Ian and Aggies boat was called Corybas, so there is a lovely connection there.
Corybas is one of my favourite pieces and I wish it was performed more. I’m grateful for Omar Carmenates’s excellent percussion adaptation of the piece, which has given it more outings.
– John Psathas