Organ . Percussion . Light . Electronics
Abtei Brauweiler, August 10, 2023

PROGRAMME

Erkki-Sven Tüür (1959*)
SPECTRUM I


Iain Farrington (1977*) Suite FIESTA!
  • Celebration
  • Conversations
  • Stride dance
  • Song
  • Fast dance
  • Nocturne
  • Finale

Vladimir Magalashvili (1991*) IMPROVISATION on John Dowland's Pavane Lacrimae

Michael Bonaventure (1962*) LOVE TRANSFORMED based on John Dowland's Pavane Lacrimae

Adrian Foster (1988*) SEA CHANGE (TRANSFORMATION)

Oleg Yanchenko (1939-2002) MEDITATION

Pierre Cochereau (1924-1984) BOLÉRO

About the Project

Erkki-Sven Tüür is an Estonian composer. He studied flute, percussion and composition in Tallinn. From 1979 to 1984 he headed the rock group In Spe, which quickly became one of the most popular in Estonia. Tüür left In Spe to concentrate on composition. As a composer, Tüür has received wide international recognition. He experiments with twelve-tone technique and electroacoustic sound means, as well as with elements of minimalistic music. All this can be found in this his first composition for organ Spectrum I, which he wrote in 1989.

Iain Farrington is an English pianist, organist, composer and arranger. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music, London and at Cambridge University. His suite Fiesta! composed in a bright, jazzy style. Fiesta is music about celebrations and merry-making. In short movements, the mood is unashamedly joyous, ranging from wild excitement to intimacy. Despite the title, there are no Spanish elements in the music. Celebration establishes the scene with its jumpy, knock-about rhythms, and champagne-popping spirit. Lively natterings and gossipings of individuals are heard in Conversations, arguing and laughing about life. To get people on their feet, the Stride Dance launches a lively, bouncing rhythm. A gentle Song relaxes the atmosphere before the pounding, foot-stomping rhythms of Fast Dance. As the festivities draw on, a bluesy Nocturne slackens the pace, with an improvisatory solo at the heart of the movement. Renewed energy is found in the Finale, a carefree fugue that breaks into a frantic dance. The celebrations are nearly brought to a premature conclusion by protestations from the neighbours, but this is a party that could go on and on…

Michael Bonaventure is Scottish composer, organist and collaborator in new and experimental music projects; based in Edinburgh & Amsterdam. Extended cyclic works predominate in his output, which includes a huge body of electronic and electro-acoustic pieces as well as instrumental and organ music. Love Transformed is an electro-acoustic transformation of lute song 'Flow, my tears' by English Renaissance composer John Dowland (1563-1626). Before it would become the most famous of Dowland's works, this lute song was originally published as an instrumental work in 1596 under the title Lachrimae Pavane. The text expresses the intense melancholy of a person whose happiness has been abruptly destroyed and who now no longer wants to be saved from this dark despair, which conjures up ideas of darkness and neglect.

Flow my tears, fall from your springs
Exiled forever, let me mourn
Where night's black bird her sad infamy sings
There let me live forlorn

Down vain lights, shine you no more
No nights are dark enough for those
That in despair their lost fortunes deplore
Light doth but shame disclose

Never may my woes be relieved
Since pity is fled
And the tears and sighs and groans, my weary days
My weary days of all joys have deprived

From the highest spire of contentment
My fortune is thrown
And fear and grief and pain for my deserts, for my deserts
Are my hopes, since hope is gone

Hark, you shadows that in darkness dwell
Learn to contemn light
Happy, happy they that in hell
Feel not the world's despite

Hark, you shadows that in darkness dwell
Learn to contemn light
Happy, happy they that in hell
Feel not the world's despite


Adrian Foster is an American organist, composer, and teacher based in Montréal, Québec. He is the co-founder and co-artistic director of Earth World Collaborative, a creative force generating new works of music, art, film, and literature through collaboration. The work is inspired by the idea of change and metamorphosis, and in particular the cycle Morphology by composer Michael Bonaventure. Composed in 2018, Adrian Foster's Sea Change features organ together with an electronic soundtrack. It is titled after the famous lines from William Shakespeare's The Tempest: "Nothing of him that doth fade, / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange." The work is based on gradual transformations of interwoven lines played on the keyboards, creating a web-like effect of colours and textures.

Oleg Yanchenko was a Russian organist, composer and professor at the Moscow Conservatory. The author of 6 symphonies for orchestra, operas, ballets, chamber compositions, music for films paid a special place in his work to pipe organ and organ music. In 1982 he composed a Meditation for Organ, which also has a version for organ and voice, published as Ave Maria. Having incorporated the lyricism of the melody and tonally tense harmonies, this work has become one of the most performed of all the composer's compositions.

Pierre Cochereau was a French composer and pedagogue, greatly renowned as an improviser and organist in his lifetime and still is today. Cochereau was titular organist of the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris from 1955 to his death in 1984. Boléro was improvised at the great organ of Notre-Dame on 14 May 1973, commissioned by the Philips label and published as an LP. This piece is designed for a large instrument and reconstructed by Cochereau's son, Jean-Marc Cochereau.
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