Nova Digital Booklet

TOBIAS

PICKER

Nova 1 2 3

I. Fast II. Slow III. Fast

2:01 5:19 3:05

4

Nocturne for Clarinet and Piano

4:26

5 6 7 8

Suite for Cello and Piano I. Serenade II. Daylight III. Lament IV. Alone

5:16 5:46 6:43 7:45

Speculum Musicae • Tobias Picker, piano Charles Neidich, clarinet • Ursula Oppens, piano

Lynn Harrell, cello • Anne-Marie McDermott, piano

Three Pieces for Piano 9 I. Svelto 10 II. Liberamente 11 III. Feroce

0:55 5:09 1:03

Invisible Lilacs 12 I. Fast 13 II. Elegy 14 III. Moto Perpetuo

4:17 7:55 6:02

Peter Serkin, piano

Young Uck Kim, violin • Emanuel Ax, piano

15 Pianorama

9:53

Tobias Picker, piano • Ursula Oppens, piano

16 17 18

The Blue Hula I. Slow II. Fast and Jazzy III. Very Fast Speculum Musicae • Tobias Picker, piano

5:04 2:41 1:33

Produced by Jeanne Velonis Published by Schott Music Recorded in New York City, 1979-2009 Mastered by Jeanne Velonis © 2025 • BSTC-0220 • brightshiny.ninja • All rights reserved.

Unauthorized replication & distribution prohibited

Tobias Picker is an American composer whose music has been described as “displaying a distinctively soulful style that is one of the glories of the current musical scene” and “one of the most consistently interesting among the present generation of US theatre composers” (BBC Music Magazine), “a genuine creator with a fertile unforced vein of invention” (The New Yorker), and “our finest composer for the lyric stage” (Wall Street Journal).

He was the recipient of the 2020 Grammy Award for “Best Opera Recording” for his family opera, Fantastic Mr. Fox (BMOP Sound). Picker’s operas have been commissioned by Theater St. (Lili Elbe), Santa Fe Opera (Emmeline), LA Opera (Fantastic Mr. Fox), Dallas Opera (Thérèse Raquin), The Metropolitan Opera (An American Tragedy), San Francisco Opera (Dolores Claiborne), and Opera Theatre Saint Louis (Awakenings).

The chamber version of Thérèse Raquin was premiered at The Royal Opera House’s Linbury Theater. His orchestral music has been performed by major American orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, and the Cleveland Orchestra, as well as the Munich Philharmonic, Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, and at the BBC Proms.

Picker served as Artistic Director of Tulsa Opera from 2016-2022, during which time he cast Lucia Lucas as Don Giovanni, the first transgender opera singer in a leading role on the American stage, as well as producing Greenwood Overcomes, a concert featuring works by 23 Black composers in observance of the 2021 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial. He and his partner of 45 years, novelist and neuroradiologist Aryeh Lev Stollman, were married by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. His music is published exclusively by Schott.

Speculum Musicae was an American chamber ensemble dedicated to the performance of contemporary classical music. It was founded in New York City in 1971 and was particularly noted for its performances of the music of Elliott Carter and Charles Wuorinen. Oboist Joel Marangella and cellist Fred Sherry were two of the group's founding members, and Robert Black was also a long-time member.

The group was made up of twelve New Yorkbased musicians. Its repertoire included 25 commissioned works, 52 world premieres, and 32 U.S. premieres.

Speculum Musicae held in residencies at Brandeis University, Columbia University, Harvard University, and Rice University, and recorded for the Albany, Bridge, Cambria, Centaur, Columbia, Composers Recordings, Inc., New World, and Nonesuch labels. They received the Laurel Leaf Award from the American Composers Alliance in 1997.

Nova features various members of Speculum Musicae (Fred Sherry, Donald Palma, John Graham, Eric Bartlett, Virgil Blackwell, Ursula Oppens, Susan Palma-Nidel, and Gordon Gottlieb) alongside longtime collaborators Benjamin Hudson, Charles Neidich, Lynn Harrell, Ann-Marie McDermott, Peter Serkin, Young Uck Kim, and Emanuel Ax.

Nova is short for Nova Scotia salmon, which in New York is customarily eaten on a bagel with

cream cheese. It was composed in 1979 as a modern-day companion piece to Schubert’s Trout Quintet. Using my favorite fish as the title was a tribute to New York’s bustling deli culture and a contrast to Schubert’s more pastoral vision of the trout. Nova is in three movements that last ten minutes and concludes with a surprise chorale.

Nocturne for Clarinet and Piano was written in 2009 for Charles Neidich to perform with

Ursula Oppens at the SUNY Graduate Center for a concert of works by myself, Joan Tower, Tania Leon, and my teacher Elliott Carter, who was at the time 101. It is a contemplative work reminiscent of my tone poem Old and Lost Rivers.

The Suite for Cello and Piano, from 1998, is a much longer work and was commissioned for Lynn Harrell by a consortium of chamber music organizations including the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and San Francisco Performances. It features songs without words from poems by E. E. Cummings and W. S. Merwin as well as the Ghost Aria (without words) from my opera Therese Raquin. The BBC Proms commissioned a concerto version of the Suite and premiered it in the summer of 2000 at the Royal Albert Hall with Paul Watkins as soloist with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Three Pieces for Piano was commissioned by Peter Serkin along with pieces by ten other

composers including Toru Takemitsu and Hans Werner Henze, which he performed around the world in 1988 and 1989. He asked each of us to compose something about seven minutes long. I wrote a slow, lyrical middle movement flanked by two quick outer movements that divided all the notes from the middle movement into two parts, reimagined and played at lightning speed.

Invisible Lilacs was commissioned by Young Uck Kim and premiered with Emanuel Ax at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1993. It is a big work, similar in scope to the Suite for Cello and Piano, and takes its title from Proust: “When, on a summer evening, the melodious sky growls like a tawny lion, and everyone is complaining of the storm, it is the memory of the Méséglise way that makes me stand alone in ecstasy, inhaling, through the noise of the falling rain, the lingering scent of invisible lilacs.”

Pianorama was written in memory of my dear friend the great pianist Paul Jacobs, who died of AIDS in 1983, and premiered by Ursula Oppens and myself at a Group for Contemporary Music concert in 1984. It charts the life force of a great pianist, full of energy and promise that over the course of time is drained and emptied.

The Blue Hula was composed when I was living in Hawaii in 1980 and 1981, just after I began living with my life partner, the writer and neuroradiologist, and now my librettist, Aryeh Lev Stollman. Some 45 years later, I recall the unbounded happiness and energy of falling in love.

The Blue Hula reflects that youthful vigor and happiness. I enjoyed performing it with the preeminent new music group of the time, Speculum Musicae.

“The pieces on this album chart my artistic journey from “Nova” (1979) through Nocturne for Clarinet and Piano (2009). I was a young composer when I wrote “Nova,” and I look across the years at the youthful exuberance with which I composed at 25.

Looking back on performances of all these pieces by great musicians such as Peter Serkin, Emanuel Ax, Lynn Harrell, Fred Sherry, and Annie McDermott, among others, I feel deeply grateful to have had my work interpreted with such profound artistry.”

Special thanks to Mrs. Roma Broida Wittcoff for underwriting this recording and for her belief in my work. Thanks also to Dan Visconti and Louis Levitt for their commitment to this project.

- Tobias Picker

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