Matt Haimovitz’s 2013-14 ranges from period Beethoven to Glass premiere
For trailblazing, prize-winning cellist Matt Haimovitz, the 2013-14 season brings explorative collaborations and high-profile solo ventures, including two new recordings. On stage, he and frequent piano partner Christopher O’Riley delve into the world of period instruments with a program of Beethoven’s Cello Sonatas on September 10 in Chicago. On record, the first of Haimovitz’s two collaborative releases this season is Angel Heart, to be issued September 24 by Oxingale Records as a deluxe CD book (and later as an iPad app by Mirada). Angel Heart is a multimedia music storybook based on a new tale by best-selling children’s author Cornelia Funke, and it features music by Luna Pearl Woolf, with performances by Haimovitz’s all-cello ensemble Uccello plus Frederica von Stade and Jeremy Irons, among others. To launch Angel Heart, Haimovitz and friends will give multimedia performances at Cal Performances in Berkeley (Oct 6) and at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall (Oct 21). The New Year brings the next collaborative album: Akoka, which Haimovitz created in league with klezmer clarinetist and composer David Krakauer. To be released by Oxingale on February 25, 2014, the album includes the title work by Krakauer, Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time and a remix of the Messiaen by electronica artist Socalled. In solo mode, Haimovitz will help celebrate Benjamin Britten’s centenary with performances of the composer’s three Suites for Solo Cello, including a concert of all three in Edmonton, Alberta (Nov 9); in New York, he will be juxtaposing Britten’s suites with contemporary works by the likes of György Ligeti, John Tavener, Lisa Bielawa and David Sanford as part of Trinity Wall Street’s “Celebrating Britten” Festival (Oct 17, Nov 21). A highlight of Haimovitz’s spring will be his European premiere of Philip Glass’s Cello Concerto No. 2, “Naqoyqatsi” on April 9 in Switzerland, followed by a UK tour of the work; the Cincinnati Enquirer described his U.S. premiere of the concerto last year as “deeply beautiful.”
Haimovitz & O’Riley
The 2013-14 season will include several performances by the duo of Haimovitz and O’Riley, including programs showcasing music from their hit album Shuffle.Play.Listen. Reviewing that album, Strings magazine said: “Haimovitz’s musical zeal, plus O’Riley’s amazing finesse, equals a powerhouse sound that vacillates wildly between whispery plaintiveness, emotive intensity and enviable improvisational prowess…rounding out a wonderfully diverse musical experience performed by two incredibly complex artists.” As part of the International Beethoven Project’s Love 2013 festival in Chicago, the duo will perform a Shuffle.Play.Listen program on September 9; on the next evening, they will perform Beethoven’s five Cello Sonatas, with Haimovitz playing a gut-string period cello and O’Riley an early 19th-century fortepiano. A recent New York Times article on more classical performers exploring period instruments featured Haimovitz talking about his “new” 1770 Bohemian instrument, his “Beethoven cello.” In the story, the cellist says he is “embracing the human aspect of it: how alive these strings are. … It opens up for me a whole spectrum of color and possibilities.”
Explaining further his foray into period instruments with O’Riley, Haimovitz says: “Although we’re known more for breaking down barriers between genres – rock, jazz, classical – period performance practice is actually a return to our roots. Chris has performed on pianoforte before and, as a Harvard undergrad, I worked with one of the great Beethoven scholars, Lewis Lockwood, writing my senior thesis on Beethoven’s Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 102 No. 2. Since those days, I’ve been fascinated by Beethoven’s manuscripts, working closely with sketches, drafts, first editions. Translating those discoveries to historically appropriate instruments is the next step in this exploration. The sound is more intimate, yet richly textured in timbre. The sense of balance and equality between the original instruments is a revelation, the cello now able to overpower or give lead to the keyboard as necessary. The variety of roles between the instruments is more subtle and clearly defined.”
Back on modern instruments in December, Haimovitz and O’Riley will meet in the studio for their next recording project, a double-album tentatively titled Troika (for release in fall 2014) that juxtaposes the music of Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff.
Angel Heart
On September 24, Oxingale will release the deluxe CD book Angel Heart, the multimedia music storybook project that sees Haimovitz collaborating with his Grammy-nominated group Uccello – an all-cello ensemble of students and alumni at McGill University in Montreal (where Haimovitz is on the faculty). Conceived by composer Luna Pearl Woolf (Haimovitz’s wife) and soprano Lisa Delan, Angel Heart presents a musical setting for a new story by best-selling children’s author Cornelia Funke. Arrangements of lullabies and folk songs are interspersed with Woolf’s original music and narration by Oscar, Tony and Emmy award-winning actor Jeremy Irons. Other performers on the album include Delan, legendary mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, countertenor Daniel Taylor, baritone Sanford Sylvan and the late mezzo Zheng Cao. Haimovitz will lead multimedia presentations of Angel Heart at Cal Performances in Berkeley (Oct 6) and at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall in New York (Oct 21).
Akoka
On February 25, 2014, Oxingale will release Akoka, an album revolving around Olivier Messiaen’s ever-moving Quartet for the End of Time. Haimovitz began developing a program involving Messiaen’s work – which the French composer famously composed in a Nazi prison camp – with clarinetist-composer David Krakauer at the Banff Centre in Canada in 2007. Krakauer – a virtuoso of the klezmer style as well as a composer and arranger of works for the Kronos Quartet, among many others – wrote an improvisatory piece named for Henri Akoka, the Jewish clarinetist who performed in the 1941 premiere of Messiaen’s work in the prison camp. Krakauer also joins Haimovitz, violinist Jonathan Crow and pianist Geoffrey Burleson for the performance of Quartet for the End of Time. The album’s other piece is a remix of the Messiaen work by the sound artist Socalled. Haimovitz says: “To focus on Akoka’s story is to bring out the human aspect of Messiaen’s composition as seen through the eyes of one individual caught up in terrifying events beyond his control. The Messiaen is bookmarked between the two new works in a way that lifts it out of the polite confines of a normal chamber music performance.” Haimovitz, Krakauer and company will celebrate the release of Akoka with a performance in Tucson on February 27, with more performances in the spring.
Bach and beyond
On January 25, 2014, Haimovitz – whose sound has been praised for its “emotional urgency and richness of tone” by the San Francisco Chronicle – will perform Bach’s complete Suites for Solo Cello in Washington, DC. And in May, the cellist will go into the studio to set down a new recording of the six Bach Suites for Oxingale Records, to be released in 2015 as a multi-CD set and a Blu-ray/DVD. Haimovitz’s latest exploration of these sublime works – his first recording of the Suites launched Oxingale in 2000 – reflects his deepening intimacy with the music, the manuscripts and the role of the Suites in the development of the cello as a solo instrument. The Blu-ray/DVD will include performance video and a documentary. In addition to the recording of the Suites, the project will include newly commissioned “overtures” to the works by such composers as Philip Glass and Wolfgang Rihm.
European Premiere of Glass’s “Naqoyqatsi” Concerto
This past spring saw the Orange Mountain Music release of Haimovitz’s recording of Philip Glass’s Cello Concerto No. 2, “Naqoyqatsi,” with Dennis Russell Davies and the Cincinnati Symphony. The recording was a WQXR “Album of the Week,” with the reviewer stating: “This dark score gives us Glass’s late style at its best. Weird melodic modes kink around sharp harmonic corners; the solo cello gets moments of unsettling loveliness and spectacular virtuosity.” On April 9, Haimovitz will give the European premiere of the “Naqoyqatsi” Concerto with Dennis Russell Davies in Basel, Switzerland; a tour of the UK follows, including four concerts at Cadogan Hall in London (April 23-30).
Matt Haimovitz: 2013-14 engagements
Sep 9
Chicago, IL
Beethoven Festival: LOVE 2013
Shuffle.Play.Listen with Christopher O’Riley, piano
Sep 10
Chicago, IL
Beethoven Festival: LOVE 2013
Beethoven: Five Sonatas for Piano and Cello (on gut strings and fortepiano)
Christopher O’Riley, fortepiano
Sep 12
Nacogdoches, TX
Stephen F. Austin State University College of Fine Arts
Shuffle.Play.Listen with Christopher O’Riley, piano
Sep 19
Moorhead, MN
Minnesota State University Moorhead
Shuffle.Play.Listen with Christopher O’Riley, piano
Sep 25
Kalamazoo, MI
Dalton Center Recital Hall @ Western Michigan University
“Beyond Bach”
Britten: Suites for Solo Cello
Oct 6
San Francisco, CA
Cal Performances
Luna Pearl Woolf: Angel Heart
Uccello
Oct 10
Aiken, SC
University of South Carolina
Shuffle.Play.Listen with Christopher O’Riley, piano
Oct 17
New York, NY
Trinity Wall Street
“Beyond Bach”
Britten: Suite for Solo Cello No. 3
Schubert: “Arpeggione” Sonata, selected song transcriptions
John Tavener: Chant for Cello
Oct 21
New York, NY
Carnegie Hall: Zankel Hall
Luna Pearl Woolf: Angel Heart
Uccello
Oct 26
Atlanta, GA
Emory University
Philip Glass: Cello Concerto No. 2, “Naqoyqatsi”
Emory University Symphony Orchestra / Richard Prior, conductor
Nov 2
Oshawa, ON
Bloch: Schelomo
Ontario Philharmonic
Nov 5
Toronto, ON
Bloch: Schelomo
Ontario Philharmonic
Nov 9
Edmonton, AB
The Arden Theatre
“Beyond Bach”
Britten: Suites for Solo Cello
Nov 15, 17
Seattle, WA
Town Hall / Mt. Baker Community Club
Simple Measures
Cello Divas II: Solo cello and multi-cello arrangements
Nov 21
New York, NY
Trinity Wall Street
Britten: Suite for Cello No. 1
Ligeti: Sonata for Solo Cello
Augusta Read Thomas: Spring Song
Berio: Sequenza VIb
Jacques Hétu: Opus 11b
Jennifer Higdon: Suite
Dec 8
Purchase, NY
Recital hall at the Performing Arts Center at Purchase College
Shuffle.Play.Listen with Christopher O’Riley, piano
Jan 10, 2014
Detroit, MI
Location TBA
Shuffle.Play.Listen with Christopher O’Riley, piano
Jan 11
Detroit, MI
Detroit Chamber Music Society
Seligman Performing Arts Center
Schubert: Quintet for Two Violins, Viola and Two Cellos
With Jasper String Quartet
Jan 25
Washington, DC
Dumbarton Concerts
J.S. Bach: Six Suites for Solo Cello
Feb 7
Minneapolis, MN
Location TBA
Minnesota Sinfonietta
Bloch: Schelomo
Feb 8
Minneapolis, MN
Temple of Aaron
Minnesota Sinfonietta
Bloch: Schelomo
Feb 9
Minneapolis, MN
Temple Israel Minneapolis
Minnesota Sinfonietta
Bloch: Schelomo
Feb 27
Tempe, AZ
University of Arizona
Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time
Brahms: Clarinet Trio
Schiff: Gimpel the Fool Suite
David Krakauer, Matt Haimovitz & Friends
March 7
Kingston, ON
The Grand Theatre
Shuffle.Play.Listen with Christopher O’Riley, piano
March 11
Akron, OH
Tuesday Musical
Program TBA
A Far Cry
March 31
Amherst, MA
University of Massachusetts
Shuffle.Play.Listen with Christopher O’Riley, piano
April 5
Davis, CA
Mondavi Center
AKOKA: The End of Time
Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time
David Krakauer, Matt Haimovitz, Socalled & Friends
April 9
Basel, Switzerland
Philip Glass: Cello Concerto No. 2, “Naqoyqatsi” (European Premiere)
Basel Symphony Orchestra / Dennis Russell Davies, conductor
April 23, 24, 28, 30
London, UK
Cadogan Hall
Philip Glass: Cello Concerto No. 2, “Naqoyqatsi”
Basel Symphony Orchestra / Dennis Russell Davies, conductor
April 25
Basingstoke, UK
The Anvil
Philip Glass: Cello Concerto No. 2, “Naqoyqatsi”
Basel Symphony Orchestra / Dennis Russell Davies, conductor
April 27
Cambridge, UK
The Corn Exchange
Philip Glass: Cello Concerto No. 2, “Naqoyqatsi”
Basel Symphony Orchestra / Dennis Russell Davies, conductor
April 29
Cardiff, UK
St. David’s Hall
Philip Glass: Cello Concerto No. 2, “Naqoyqatsi”
Basel Symphony Orchestra / Dennis Russell Davies, conductor
May 11
Seattle, WA
Lewis Spratlan: Shining, Concerto for Cello and Piano (World Premiere)
Christopher O’Riley, piano
Seattle Youth Symphony / Stephen Radcliffe, conductor
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© 21C Media Group, September 2013