TROUPE

The Empty Chair Thursday 22 February 2018 11.00am – 12 noon    

 

Biography

Barbican Piano Trio For three decades the Barbican Piano Trio has been regarded as one of the UK’s leading ensembles, with a reputation for presenting stimulating performances, for the breadth of its repertoire and for its exceptional audience rapport. At home it appears in major festivals and concert series including Blackheath, City of London, Garsington, Guildford, Bridgenorth Haydn Festival, Frinton Festival, Harrogate, Rye, Sheffield, Spitalfields, the St Jude’s Proms, Three Spires, Warwick, Bristol, Cardiff, Cambridge, Oxford and Leeds. It visits Scotland frequently and has appeared at The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh on several occasions. The Trio has given many performanc-es at London’s Wigmore Hall, a special highlight being a performance of all Beetho-ven’s piano trios in the Master Concert Series. The Trio has given concerts in Germa-ny, Belgium, Denmark, France, Holland, Sweden, Bulgaria, Italy, Spain, Romania and Russia. Further afield it has toured the Far East, South America, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan and Uzbekistan. It has visited the USA five times, performed in major venues including at New York’s Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and in Boston, Chicago, Washington and Los Angeles. The Trio plays all the acclaimed masterpieces for the genre but also enjoys exploring less familiar works. Recent performances have included music by Jean Françaix, Paul Schoenfield and Hugh Wood. The Trio has also given premieres of new works by Peter Lawson, James Francis Brown, Artiom Kim, Bill Campbell and David Matthews. Its discography on ASV, Guild, Black Box and Dutton feature works by Mendelssohn, Lalo, Tchaikovsky, Taneyev, Rachmaninov, Schnittke, John Ireland and Alan Bush. As part of its commitment to education work, the trio holds regular masterclasses and presents informative concerts for students of all ages.

Catherine Carter The Songs of ThisThat (2016) Catherine Carter’s ThisThat songs use the music of Meredith Monk as a starting point, echoing the shape of the tune in ‘Travel Dream Song’. Catherine wanted to be playful with her voice and express how ThisThat is a kindly visitor – friend not foe. Look (and listen) out for the singing bowl that ThisThat plays. A singing bowl is a kind of upside-down bell. Notice how Catherine gently hits the bowl with a small stick and then uses this stick to circle the edge of the bowl. This circling helps the bowl wobble quickly and delicately to create a magical hum-ming sound. See how many notes you can hear swimming up from the bowl… Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) Cello Suite No. 1 Op. 72 (1964) Canto primo. Sostenuto e largamente In the 1960s, Britten promised the famous cellist Rostropovich that he would write this piece, signing a pledge on the back of a restaurant napkin. It is beautifully sad and heavy music. This heaviness comes partly from the cello almost constantly play-ing two notes at once (something called double-stopping). This technique of drawing the bow across two strings at the same time lends a particular weight and effort to the sound.

Music you will hear today

Meredith Monk (b.1942) Travel Dream Song from Atlas (1991) Meredith Monk is a singing, composing adventurer who loves exploring what human voices can do. Listen as the voice travels across different vowel sounds and hear how the gently looping piano part rises and falls like a hypnotist’s pendulum. Anton Webern (1883–1945) Three little pieces for cello and piano Op. 11 (1914) Anton Webern (vay-burn) was an interesting mixture of being very wild and very organised. He loved using mathematical ideas in his pieces, numbering the notes of the scale then using these numbers to decide the order of notes in his music. This is called ‘serialism’ but has nothing whatsoever to do with Rice Krispies. He wrote these Three Little Pieces in 1914. It can be hard to hear where one ends and the next begins so here are two clues. The second piece starts with a loud crash of notes in the piano (the first loud thing to happen). The third piece begins with a trill (a whizzing rumble between two notes) in the cello. Luciano Berio (1925–2003) Ballo from Quattro Canzoni Popolari (1946–7, rev.1973) The Italian composer Luciano Berio was another musical adventurer. He said: ‘I am caught by the thrill of discovery.’ This song is from a set of folksong arrangements (although we think Berio and the singer Cathy Berberian may have mischievously written the original songs themselves too). ‘Ballo’ (‘Dance’) is all about the wild extremes of human emotion: listen out for the racing pulse of the piano and babbling ‘la-ri-la’ sounds in the voice.

Moondog (1916–1999) I’m This I’m That (1978) Moondog was born in 1916 and wrote many songs and poems, as well as inventing musical instruments. He was once called Louis Thomas Hardin but when he was age 31 he decided he would prefer to be called Moondog. Moondog became famous for wandering the streets of New York wearing a Viking helmet, sometimes singing his songs, sometimes standing in silence. This song is taken from Moondog’s 1978 album H’Art Songs.

© Kate Wakeling 2018

François Couperin (1668–1733) Les Barricades Mystérieuses (1717) The Mysterious Barricades was written for the harpsichord – an instrument that looks like a small piano but sounds quite different as the strings hidden inside are plucked (a bit like a harp). The meaning of this piece’s title remains a MYSTERY. Some people think it could link to secret societies or masked balls or a wild revolution or something that simply unsettled how music of that time usually sounded. No one knows for certain. See what you think. (And please send us a postcard if you think you know the answer.) George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) Words move words from Rodelinda (1719) (arr. by TROUPE) This aria (or song) is taken from an opera by George Frederic Handel. The opera tells a story about love, power and a stolen throne, and this particular song is heard when a character (who is still alive) reads his own gravestone. We have recast this piece of music as a dreamlike song performed by ThisThat and with brand new words. Claude Debussy (1862–1918) Cello Sonata in D minor (1915) Prologue. Lent, sostenuto e molto risoluto This is the beginning of a longer piece for cello and piano (a bit like the two persons’ conversation at this moment in the story). It was written in 1915. Debussy had been struggling with the misery of the First World War and with illness so had stopped composing. Then suddenly he found he could create music again. He wrote: ‘It was like a rediscovery and it seemed to me more beautiful than ever. The emotional satisfaction one gets from music can’t be equaled, can it, in any of the other arts?’

Catherine Carter voice Jessie Maryon Davies piano Sophie Rivlin cello

Created and devised by TROUPE Written by Kate Wakeling Directed by Donnacadh O'Briain with the company Designed by Ruth Paton with Ana Maio Graça Tour produced by Liz Muge Generously supported by Arts Council England, Aldeburgh Music, The Cooper Hall Foundation and by Spitalfields Music through their Work-in-Progress scheme.

Biographies

Singer and performance maker Catherine Carter has created work including with Erratica, Langham Research Centre, Dowland Works, Spitalfields Music, Miriam Sherwood, Aurora Orchestra, Birmingham Opera Company, English National Opera, Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Over the Moon and Lost Dog Dance Theatre. Catherine has also written new music for a Sonic Trail for Christina Mackie’s The Filters at Tate Britain, Weld for Juice Vocal Ensemble at the Bascule Chamber Concerts and is currently working with multi-instrumentalist Serafina Steer on a new collaboration, ExText.

Jessie Maryon Davies is a pianist, story-teller, composer and workshop leader. She leads creative community projects for English National Opera, Britten Sinfonia, Southbank Centre and is workshop leader in residence at Aurora Orchestra. Internationally, she has led singing projects with children in Palestine, India and Australia. She co-leads the all-female pop choir, Lips, who have performed at the Royal Festival Hall, Royal Albert Hall and live on BBC Television. In 2015 she co-founded the charity Girls Rock London to support young women in developing self-esteem and confidence through music-making.

Donnacadh O’Briain is an Olivier Award-winning theatre director specialising in new writing. His productions have been performed at The Royal Shakespeare Company, in the West End and internationally. He sometimes moonlights in the world of classical music, most notably with the NPG Portrait Choir and Latitude Festival. His acclaimed production of Rotterdam by Jon Brittain won the 2017 Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre, subsequently ran at The Arts Theatre (West End), and will tour the UK during the 2018/19 season. His next production, Rejoicing at Her Wondrous Vulva the Young Woman Applauded Herself, plays at the Oval House Theatre.

Sophie Rivlin is a freelance cellist working in London. This year she has performed a concerto with the Culm Valley Orchestra, recorded for the Riot Ensemble’s forthcoming CD Chest of Toys and been musical director for MishMash Productions award-winning Smile. She has performed chamber music at major UK venues and festivals and performed with orchestras including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. After gaining a BA in philosophy from Cambridge University, she graduated with distinction from the Royal Academy of Music. Kate Wakeling is a poet and musicologist. Her debut collection of children’s poetry, Moon Juice (The Emma Press) was critically acclaimed and won the prestigious 2017 CLiPPA and is nominated for the 2018 Carnegie Medal. Kate’s poetry for adults has been published widely, including a pamphlet The Rainbow Faults (The Rialto), and in The Guardian, The Forward Book of Poetry 2016 (Faber & Faber) and The Best British Poetry 2014 (Salt). She is the Aurora Orchestra’s writer-in-residence and writes regularly for the TLS and BBC Music magazine.