Dialogues, Pina Napolitano & Orkiestra Muzyki Nowej

DIALOGUES Pina Napolitano with Orkiestra Muzyki Nowej

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DIALOGUES Pina Napolitano with Orkiestra Muzyki Nowej Elliot Carter Dialogues I for piano and large ensemble(2003) J.S. Bach Harpsichord Concerto No. 1 BWV 2052, D minor 1729-1736) Jeffrey Mumford (b. 1955, unfolding waves(2018-19 J.S. Bach Harpsichord Concerto No. 7 BWV 1058, G minor 1717-1723) Elliot Carter Dialogues I for piano and Chamber orchestra(2010)

Disc and concert projects available from Spring 2023 Connecting composers of different epochs has become a way for me to think about music and about the relationship between modernity and tradition. “Dialogues” is yet another step along this path. This project is centered around the first performance and recording of unfolding waves, a piano concerto that the great African American composer Jeffrey Mumford dedicated to me. The work, for 31 musicians, presents a dialogue of superimposed lines interlacing the solo piano part with significant harp and marimba contributions.

Jeffrey Mumford studied composition with Elliott Carter and through Mumford’s distinct voice one can clearly hear echoes of his mentor. Therefore, I decided to sandwich his concerto between Elliott Carter’s Dialogues 1 and Dialogues 2 for piano and chamber orchestra. These, in turn, are alternated by two Bach concerti, numbers 1 and 7.

The title of Carter’s Dialogues refers to the conversation happening between soloist and ensemble, which, in these works, respond to each other alternatively, functioning basically as two contrasting solo parts. The Bach concerti also suggest the idea of a dialogue, but here between the keyboard and orchestra in such a way that there is no real solo and accompaniment but a pair of equal parts in conversation.

The idea of different dialogical relationships between soloist and orchestra together with that of a dialogue among different composers through time is the thread that ties this program together.

Pina Napolitano

www.pina.com www.omn.art.pl www.jeffreymumford.com

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Pina Napolitano Pina Napolitano made a splash with her debut CD in 2012: Norman Lebrecht shortlisted it for his Sinfini Music Album of the Year; Guy Rickards in International Piano Magazine called the CD “outstanding”, citing the “tensile strength to her playing that is distinctly hers”, and Calum MacDonald in BBC Music Magazine gave it five stars for its “rare penetration, understanding, grace and elegance”.

Pina Napolitano is, through her teacher Bruno Mezzena, a grand-student of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. Her recent focus has been the music of the Second Viennese School, which she considers not as a primarily intellectual venture, but a highly emotional and expressive one – “wholly saturated with expression” (Österreichische Musikzeitschrift), a “perfect conjunction between microcellular dissection and almost heartbreaking expressive sensitivity” (Ritmo), a “heady romanticism both irresistible and unsettling” (Arts Desk).

She is especially interested in the retrospective view looking from today, via early modernism, at the works of the romantic and classical period.

Her second disc Elegy was built around the Schoenberg and Bartok Third Piano Concerto. “Pina Napolitano allows the listener to be able to feel utterly at home in the work with what seems like little effort” (Gramophone). Her third disc Brahms the Progressive explores the connections between late Brahms and the Second Viennese School. “Napolitano’s touch, which is at once forceful and seductive, helps bind everything together on this very enjoyable disc,” (Michael Church, BBC Music Magazine). In a raving review of her performance at St John’s Smith Square Mark Berry wrote “Nothing was overstated: instead, we were made to listen.” The disc was awarded the 2018 August “Record Geijutsu” in Japan, 5 Stars in UK’s International Piano Magazine, and Five Diapasons in France.

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Her fourth album, released in July 2020, entitled Tempo e Tempi, features Elliott Carter’s Night Fantasies and Two Thoughts about the Piano, alongside Beethoven’s Sonatas Opp. 110 and 111 and Jeffrey Mumford’s two Elliott Carter tributes.

“A provocatively brave album” (BBC Music Magazine, 5*), “... Napolitano shines ... “ (Wiener Zeitung), “... brilliantly executed … Vividly recorded … vigorous yet precisely pointed…” (The Sunday Times), “Napolitano’s performance of the Carter Night Fantasies boasts unflagging confidence and simply exudes authority… one never doubts the greatness of the piece, or of the performance… This is mature Beethoven playing that, Furtwängler-like, keeps the large-scale always in view…” (Fanfare).

This season will also hear her perform Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 in Lithuania, to be recorded together with the Webern Concerto Op. 24 with the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra with Modestas Pitrėnas directing.

After studying with Giusi Ambrifi in her native Caserta near Naples, she attended masterclasses with Tibor Egly, Bruno Canino, Alexander Lonquich, Giacomo Manzoni, and Hugh Collins Rice. She graduated in Piano Solo Performance and in 20th-Century Piano Music with Bruno Mezzena at the Pescara Music Academy. She also earned two B.A.s from the University of Naples “L’Orientale” in Classical Philology and Slavistics, and then a doctorate in Slavistics. Her book Osip Mandel’štam: i Quaderni di Mosca was published by Firenze University Press in 2016 in the Studi Slavistici series. A new book of translations of Mandel’štam is to be published in 2021 with Einaudi Editore. Her music has been broadcast by Radio France Classique, the Rai, MDR, and SDR, and presented live multiple times by BBC3, including InTune, and Rai Radio 3, including for the Concerti del Quirinale.

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OMN - Orkiestra Muzyki Nowej Founded in 1996, the Orkiestra Muzyki Nowej (New Music Orchestra) is the oldest Polish ensemble specialising in contemporary music performance, with intense activity now spanning over 20 years.

Working first under the direction of the ensemble’s founder Aleksander Lasoń, and since 2006 under Artistic Director Szymon Bywalec, the OMN has gradually morphed from a group of enthusiastic students into a professional ensemble able to tackle the most complex scores.

The ensemble continues to hone its skills, preparing performances in cooperation with leading Polish and international composers such as Helmut Lachenmann, Louis Andriessen, Kaija Saariaho, Per Nørgård, Bent Sørensen, and many others, inviting eminent soloists such as Jakob Kullberg, Ashot Sarkissjan, Marco Blaauw, Michelle Marelli, and Rafał Zambrzycki-Payne as well as conductors specialising in new music, including Daniel Kawka, François-Xavier Roth, Jean Deroyer, Christopher Austin, Steven Loy, Ivan Buffa, and Wojciech Michniewski.

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The OMN is a regular guest at the major contemporary music festivals including Warsaw Autumn, Musica Polonica Nova, Cracow Composers’ Music Days, Premieres Festival in Katowice, Nostalgia in Poznań, Warsaw Music Meetings, Katowice Culture Nature, Beijing Modern, Melos Ethos, Klang Festival, Bridges Festival, New Music Marathon, Velvet Curtain in Lviv, Anima Mundi, Hindsgavl Festival, and at many leading music centres such as Oslo, Paris, Mons, Freiburg and Tallinn. Moreover, the ensemble has made several dozen concert and studio recordings, with the majority published by labels such as Aurora, Decca, Dux, CD-Accord, PWM, and under the ZKP–POLMIC label. Many were highly rated by critics in leading musical magazines in Italy, France, Denmark, Great Britain, and the United States, garnering international accolades such as P2-Prize (Danish Radio award) in 2012, Pizzicato Supersonic Award (Luxembourg), and nominations to Fryderyk Awards and International Classical Music Awards (ICMA).The OMN recordings for Polish Radio have been commended at the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris and Amsterdam. In 2018, five recordings made for PWM Edition will be published within the largest Polish phonographic undertaking, titled 100/100 – Musical decades of freedom.

The OMN has also cooperated with ensembles such as Court circuit, Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain, Melos Ethos Ensemble, Quasars Ensemble, and Musikfabrik as well as with sound engineers from the IRCAM, Experimentalstudio des SWR, or Tempo Reale. This activity has produced over 150 premieres at Polish and international festivals as well as first Polish performances of contemporary masterpieces, including Pierre Boulez’s Réponsand Dérive, Helmut Lachenmann’s Mouvement, Fausto Romitelli’sIndex of Metals, Beat Furrer’s Still, Rebecca Saunders’s Skin, Per Nørgård’s Momentum, Kaija Saariaho’s Notes on Light, Klaus Huber’s Erinnere dich an Golgatha..., Louis Andriessen’s La Girò, Tristan Murail’s Winterfragments and Le Lac, Bryan Fernyhough’s La Chute d’Icare, and many others.

OMN has for many years participated in artistic and educational projects, working with Europe’s leading new music ensembles and institutions (Re:New Music and New:Aud projects). The OMN has also inspired and organised many interdisciplinary events involving dancers, soloists, singers, multimedia, and computer technology, presented in atypical venues outside the traditional concert hall. Starting with the 2014/15 season, the OMN runs its own concert cycle at the NOSPR in Katowice, presenting monthly programmes of the latest music and 21st-century classics at the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra.

The New Music Orchestra has for many years participated in artistic and educational projects, working with Europe’s leading new music ensembles and institutions.

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Jeffrey Mumford Born in Washington, D.C. in 1955, composer Jeffrey Mumford has received numerous fellowships, grants, awards and commissions.

Awards include the “Academy Award in Music” from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, a Fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, and an ASCAP Aaron Copland Scholarship. He was also the winner of the inaugural National Black Arts Festival/Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Composition Competition.

Other grants have been awarded by the Ohio Arts Council, Meet the Composer, the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music Inc., the ASCAP Foundation, and the University of California.

Mumford’s most notable commissions include those from the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and the Library of Congress (co-commission), the BBC Philharmonic, the San Antonio, Chicago & National Symphonies, Washington Performing Arts, the Network for New Music, ‘cellist Mariel Roberts, the Fulcrum Point New Music Project (through New Music USA), Duo Harpverk (Iceland), the Sphinx Consortium, the Cincinnati Symphony, the VERGE Ensemble /National Gallery of Art/Contemporary Music Forum, the Argento Chamber Ensemble, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Nancy Ruyle Dodge Charitable Trust, the Meet the Composer/Arts Endowment Commissioning Music/USA, Cincinnati radio station WGUC, the Walter W. Naumburg Foundation, the Fromm Music Foundation, and the McKim Fund in the Library of Congress.

His music has been performed extensively, by major orchestras, soloists, and ensembles, both in the United States and abroad, including London, Paris, Reykjavik, Vienna, The Hague, Russia and Lithuania.

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Recent and forthcoming performances include the premiere of . . . amid still and floating depths by the Mivos Quartet as part of last season’s Los Angeles Philharmonic’s “Noon” to Midnight” new music festival, of fields unfolding . . . echoing depths of resonant light, by ‘cellist Christine Lamprea and the Omaha Symphony, the promise of the far horizon by the Mivos Quartet, . . . becoming clear (solo viola) by the Network for New Music, performances of chamber and orchestral work, as part of the June in Buffalo Festival, and of radiances blossoming in expanding air, by ‘cellist Deborah Pae and the Boston based Phoenix Orchestra. As well, noted Italian pianist, Pina Napolitano included his two Elliott Carter tributes in her European concerts last season and recorded them as part of her disc of American piano music Tempo e Tempi, in addition to unfolding waves, a concerto written for her, to be premiered with the Orkiestra Muzyki Nowej in Katowice.

Current projects include brightness dispersed, a concerto for cello & string orchestra for Mariel Roberts and the String Orchestra of Brooklyn, a new work for solo violin for Miranda Cuckson, and a CD of recent concerti.

Mumford has taught at the Washington Conservatory of Music, served as Artist-in-Residence at Bowling Green State University, and served as assistant professor of composition and Composer-in-Residence at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. He is currently Distinguished Professor at Lorain County Community College in Northern Ohio.

Mr. Mumford is published by Theodore Presser Co. and Quicklight Music.

What the critics say: “ . . . a philosophy of music making that embraced both raw passion and a gentle imagistic poetry . . his pieces carry musical evocations of the effects he describes” - Alan Kozinn, N.Y. Times “ . . . complex and richly imaginative music in which an almost romantic sensibility seems to radiate through a thoroughly contemporary surface.”

- Stephen Brookes, Washington Post

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Hamburg

Luca Di Bernardo www.vist.co luca@vist.co

+49 (0) 151 28955500

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