{ program notes
Kalhor has composed works for Iran’s
most renowned vocalists, and has also
performed and recorded with Iran’s greatest instrumentalists. He has composed
music for television and film, and was
most recently featured on the soundtrack
of Francis Ford Copolla’s Youth Without
Youth in a score that he collaborated on
with Osvaldo Golijov.
David Krakauer
Considered among
the world’s greatest
clarinetists, David
Krakauer is recognized internationally as a key innovator
in modern klezmer as well as a major
voice in classical music. He has appeared
with the Tokyo, Kronos, and Emerson
quartets, plus as soloist with the Dresden,
Seattle, and Detroit symphony orchestras, among others.
With his band Ancestral Groove, he
has redefined the klezmer genre with
major appearances at Carnegie Hall and
internationally. His discography contains
some of the past decade’s preeminent
klezmer recordings, notably The Dreams
and Prayers of Isaac the Blind (Golijov/
Kronos/Krakauer).
Consistently defying categorization,
Krakauer has collaborated with Dawn
Upshaw, Itzhak Perlman, John Zorn, Fred
Wesley, Music from Marlboro, Abraham
Inc, the Klezmatics, John Cage, Danny
Elfman, and Socalled. His newest
project, The Big Picture, explores personal identity by reimagining familiar
film themes in a cinematic concert with
original visuals.
Krakauer is an avid educator at Mannes
(New School), the Manhattan School of
Music, NYU, and the Bard Conservatory.
Michael WardBergeman
Michael Ward-Bergeman brings the 21st
century to the accordion through his passion for a wide range
of music. From his classical creations on
the concert stages of America and Europe
20 O v ertur e |
www. bsomusic .org
to the roots music projects of his trio
Groanbox, Mr. Ward-Bergeman brings an
extraordinary inventiveness, coupled with
deep respect for the past, into all of his
creations and collaborations.
Ward-Bergeman started his musical
training on piano and violin, but it was
his dedication to the accordion that led
him to invent a 21st century version of the
instrument called the “hyper-accordion.”
The hyper-accordion extends the acoustic
accordion’s potential through creative
performance technique and digital sound
processing.
Michael previously collaborated with
Osvaldo Golijov on the soundtrack for
Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without
Youth, wrote Damagomi commissioned
by Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble and
performed at least once a day for a year as
part of his GIG 365 project.
About the concert:
Medea’s Dance of Vengeance
Samuel Barber
Born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, March 9,
1910; died in New York City, January 23, 1981
Martha Graham was the high priestess
of American dance for more than five
decades: the creator of larger-than-life
female characters who would never be
caught wearing toe-shoes. Beginning in
the 1930s, she commissioned remarkable
dance scores from many of America’s leading composers, including Aaron Copland’s
Appalachian Spring, William Schuman’s
Judith, and Samuel Barber’s Medea, the latter forming the impetus for her celebrated
mythic ballet Cave of the Heart.
Perhaps the most terrifying heroine of
Greek mythology, Medea is the sorceress
daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis and the
granddaughter of the Sun God, who falls
in love with Jason and helps him to steal
the Golden Fleece. After ten years, he deserts her to marry another princess, Glaucis,
and she wreaks a terrible vengeance by
killing Glaucis with a poisoned robe and
then slaughtering the two small children
she has borne Jason. Her story became one
of Euripedes’ most powerful tragedies.
Celebrated for his lyrical, melodically
expressive music displayed in earlier works
such as the Adagio for Strings, Barber would
not have seemed a natural choice for so
violent a subject. But with the score he
created for Graham’s ballet, performed first
in 1946, then in a slightly revised version
in 1947, he transformed his style, revealing
a more intense contemporary voice full of
harmonic bite and rhythmic drive.
Sensing his music demanded bigger forces than the 13 instruments of
Graham’s pit orchestra, Barber reworked
the score into a seven-movement dance
suite for large orchestra premiered by The
Philadelphia Orchestra in 1947. Nearly a
decade later, he revised it yet again into
the one-movement Medea’s Dance of
Vengeance. This powerful distillation of
the best of his ballet score, premiered by
the New York Philharmonic on February
2, 1956, became one of his most popular
concert works.
In a program note in the score, Barber
described the work’s progression from
passive grief to active revenge: “Tracing [Medea’s] emotions from her tender
feelings towards her children, through
her mounting suspicions and anguish at
her husband’s betrayal and her decision
to avenge herself, the piece increases in
intensity to close in the frenzied Dance
of Vengeance of Medea, the Sorceress
descended from the Sun God.”
Rose of the Win