SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Presents its Season Opening Gala Concert at Old First Church
Friday September 16th, 2005 at 8 pm
Old First Presbyterian Church
1751 Sacramento Street/Van Ness, San Francisco, CA 94109
 
PROGRAM NOTES
 
 
 
First Fanfare by Alexis Alrich

An antiphonal flourish for brass quartet and percussion that places the brass choir in the balcony, using the resonant acoustics of Old First Church to create a true surround sound experience for our modern ears.
Lands End by Loren Jones

Features two fantastic guitar soloists (acoustic), Ross Thompson and Matthew Cmiel, with orchestra.

 
Furtive Asymptotes by Jan Pusina

“I had been thumbing through a copy of Art in America, and fell asleep watching television, as the idea came to me. It attempts a 'golden mean' of voicing combinations, creating large dissonant chords with emphases on specific ones. It opens with a short festive introduction, which is abandoned, but never forgotten by the percussion instruments. Conducted by the composer.

 

Kritik des Herzens (The Heart's Critique) by Michael Kimbell
The song cycle Kritik des Herzens pays homage to the great Lieder tradition exemplified by Schumann's Dichterliebe and Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. The six poems are taken and rearranged from a much larger set with the same title by the German comic poet, satirist and artist Wilhelm Busch (1832Ð1908) which was first published in 1874. By turns lyrical and ironic, Busch's poems form distilled vignettes and satirical musings on life, love, loss, resignation and reconciliation. The music is designed to bring out the intertwining sardonic and bittersweet qualities of the text; while there is no particular 'story' as such, the cycle progresses through various psychologically charged episodes: facing life's brevity with wry humour, time and disillusionment, dangers of a grand passion, longing for an escape, loss of the beloved to a rival, and the fond remembrance of a long-departed loved one.

The Heart's Critique
original German poems by Wilhelm Busch (1832-1908)
English translations by Edith & Michael Kimbell

I.
Here sits a robin trapped in lime,
He flaps his wings and can't fly home.
There creeps a tomcat black as coal,
His claws are sharp, his eyes aglow.
The greedy cat climbs ever higher,
Slyly he eyes poor Robin nigher.
The robin thinks, "That's how life is:
Since I'll be cat food in a trice,
There is no time to waste complaining,
So let me keep on serenading
And piping gaily on my branch."
The robin surely has panache.


 II.
Be not full of melancholy
That our happy times are fleet,
That the icy wave foreboding
Draws us in its cruel sweep;

That the sweet and tender passions,
That the joys of love's delight,
Every heav'nly aspiration
Fades away into the night.
Here's to loving, singing, drinking,

Cry a pox on passing time;
Just the slightest smile and twinkling
Sparkles on through everlasting time.

III.
A little fly so blithe and merry
Into the honey buzzed unwary,
Now dipping with contented greed
His trunklet in the sweet thick mead.
When he had sipped and licked his fill
He spread his little wings until
Into the air he would be winging.
Alas, his feet the honey sweet
Holds fast in sticky snare so deep.
Now starts the little fly his singing:
" Dear gods in heaven, make me free
From sweet seductive slavery!"

A friend of mine, who this did spy,
Did deeply sigh and cry: "My, my!"
IV.
Distant mountains beckon glowing!
Restless yearning wanderlust!
On the morrow I'll be going ‹
Where the devil ‹ away!

Yes, indeed I must get ready,
Must ‹ what is it holds me fast?
Just inconsequential trifles!
For example, your eyes!

V.
She was a flower bright and fair
Blossoming in the summer air.
He was a lusty butterfly
Who doted on the flow'r so shy.
Oft came a bee with busy hum
Who slyly nibbled in the sun.
Oft crept a beetle, scrabbling round
Along the petals up and down.
Oh God, this hurt the butterfly
And pierced his very heart thereby.
But what the most made him aghast,
The very worst thing came at last:
An agèd donkey did devour
His very dear belovèd flower.

 

 VI.
Oh you, who were the one most dear,
You've been at rest for many a year.
So many a year, now here alone,
My dearest one, of you I dream.
Of you I dream, in night's embrace,
To me appears your faithful face.
Your faithful face, whate'er I do
It wards me off, it keeps me true.
And should my words seem far too bold,
My deeds too poor,
So oft have you forgiven me,
Forgive once more.
Music for Movies by Zachary Ostroff

Comosed by Zachary Ostroff, 12 years old, arranged by Eduard Prosek, 14. The action movie score for a film that for the time being, exists only in the mind.

 
Sussurro by Lisa Prosek
Sung by the composer, soprano, with orchestra; features the setting of the contemporary Italian poet and lyricist, Maurizio Varca. Varca lives on the Ligurian coast, which bears, as he points out, certain affinities to the Northern California landscape. His latest poems are a series of songs, or "Canzoni" in the "stil novisti "style of extreme simplicity.
Sussurro 2005
Sussurro dolce del mio amore
Fresca la brezza nel fitto calore
sussurro dolce, profumo del fiore
nell'erb'alla riva del mar.
Ricordo com'era la prima mattina
svegliandosi lento la mia Cristina
e li al confine la nebbia schiariva
lasciando sublime il mar.
O quanto dolce avvolge la terra
la nebbia, e forse mentiva Cristina:
la nebbia scherzava ballava, rideva di me.
Sussurro dolce del mio amore.
Fresca la brezza, la frutta in fiore.
E forse mentiva Cristina, ma la nebbia schiariva lasciando sublime il mar.		  

Translation:
Sweet whisper of my love
fresh like a breeze in the dense heat.
Sweet whisper, like the perfume of a flower
in the meadow by the edge of the sea.
I remember how she was on that first morning
awakening slowly, my Christina
and on the horizon the fog was clearing
leaving the sea sublime.
How sweetly the fog embraces the earth,
and maybe Christina was lying
the fog seemed to joke, and dance, and laugh
at me.
Sweet whisper of my love
fresh as a breeze and the fruit is in flower
and maybe Christina was lying, but the fog was clearing leaving the sea sublime.

 
Insecurity, and other Agencies of Government by David Graves

This piece is inspired by the role terrorism plays in our society. The piece offers criticism of how our current systems respond to terrorism and some creative solutions to consider. The first and third movements are named after governmental agencies that the composer purports should not exist; in contrast, the second movement is named after a Ministry that the composer suggests should be created. Most of the textual instructions in the score require significant interpretation by the orchestra, e.g, “disturbed”, “alarmed”, “deep sighs”, and “suspicious”.

 
Ecclesiastes, for Soprano and Orchestra, Op. 3 / 129 by Mark Alburger
"Ecclesiastes, or The Preacher," began with gestural, indeterminate, and violent sketches indebted to Crumb's "Echoes of Time and the River." Each movement is troped on a different source -- from a white-noting (removal of accidentals) of the tenth movement ("Raub") in Arnold Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire," to a pitch language from Ralph Vaughan Williams's "Wasps Overture" hybridized with the gestures of Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries."

Text is derived from the King James version of the Bible in fragments
from each of the book's 11 chapters beginning . .

Vanity of vanities . .
Come [on] now, I will make a test of pleasure. . .
For everything there is a season . .
Again I saw . . . oppressions . . .
There is . . . evil . . . under the sun . . .
Guard your steps when you . . draw near . . . the house of God . . . .
[D]ay of death . . . is better . . . than . . day of birth. . . .
Who['s] . . . like the wise man? . . . But all this I laid to heart . . .
Dead flies make the perfume[d] ointment .
Remember . .

 
Reflections on an Empty Space by Frank Bunger

This piece was written after a poignant trip to Death Valley in the Winter. The piece is organized into three broad sections. The first represents mystery: the silent desert plain. The second represents fear: the valley is a deadly place in hotter times. The second section segues into the third, which is awe: the magnificence of the surrounding mountains, the unusual and beautiful scenery. The ending recalls some of each of these three sections, recall that Death Valley is a little bit of each of these.