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METAMORPHOSEN is a new chamber orchestra composed of the country's top young musicians assembled with the goal of promulgating a fresh approach to music-making.
Metomorphosen was founded in October of 1993 by Richard Lim and Scott Yoo in their belief that innovation need not come at the expense of substance. Along with the outstanding classics of the repertoire, the group commissions new works from emerging composers, premieres at least one composition each concert and follows a lecture-performance format.
This energetic ensemble combines the intimacy of chamber music with the virtuosity of today's young musician.
Dan Coleman
Long ago, this radiant day (1994)
The title Long ago, this radiant day is derived from a poem by Anna Akhmatova. In "The Sentence," the Russian poet shows us that tragedy or loss can help us clarify our notion of happiness. Dark emotions can be transformed into regenerative energy.
A musical work can undergo an analogous change of mood - progressing from dark ambiguity to ebullient clarity, and finally to a serene rest - while maintaining an essential, unchanging profile. My piece is based upon a tune closely related to motifs found in both Gyorgy Ligeti's Lux Aeterna and Benjamin Britten's Third String Quartet, pieces which deal overtly with death and loss. I was gratified when I realized my subconscious had linked the work's architecture to its emotional impetus.
"Long ago, this radiant day" is scored for fifteen solo strings, and is in one, fifteen minute movement. It was written in 1994 for Metamorphosen.
Irving Fine
Serious Song (1955)
In his brief career, Irving Fine produced a number of works which have entered the repertoire, including a string trio, a woodwind quintet, and the Serious Song for string orchestra. Whether imbued with late Romantic sentiment or serial technique, all of Fine's works are defined by a highly personal and advanced relationship to tonality which (along with the music of Roger Sessions) is reemerging as a seminal influence for contemporary American composers. In the Serious Song, Fine seems to mediate the ghosts of Brahms, Reger, Berg and Stravinsky to form a world entirely his own.
Ellen Toaffe Zwilich
Prologue and Variations (1983)
An accomplished violinist, Ellen Toaffe Zwilich often displays an inspired and resourceful knowledge of stringed instruments in her compositions. The musical gestures of the Prologue and Variations are inseparable from the techniques required to play them, and yet they are never heard as purely coloristic effects. The ominous barcarole which constitutes the Prologue is followed by a virtuosic set of continuous Variations. While the work requires the precision associated with a smaller ensemble, Zwilich's canny employment of the string orchestra provides for a dazzling effect.
Elliott Carter Elegy (1952)
While his music is characterized as distinctly American, Elliott Carter is internationally acknowledged as one of this century's most influential composers. Beginning in 1948, with his Sonata for Cello and Piano, Carter embarked on a gradual, but self-conscious, reevaluation of his compositional technique. The Elegy, composed in 1942 and presented here in the 1952 version for string orchestra, occupies a pivotal place in the composer's development. The work may be construed as a gentle, nostalgic farewell to the "popular, American" style of composition which was prevalent (perhaps as an escapist distraction) during the World Wars. However, Carter's mature voice is foreshadowed in the expert but uneasy counterpoint, and the nuanced reworking of small motifs.
Elena Ruehr
Shimmer (1994)
Shimmer was commissioned by Metamorphosen for their premier season in 1994-1995. Strongly inspired by the energetic string music of Vivaldi, Shimmer uses imitative counterpoint as its basis. However, the harmony, rhythm, and form is structured using a cyclical ten-note series instead of traditional tonality. The piece starts with a four-part canon in mid-range, overlaid with two-part counterpoint in the treble and bass. Undergoing constant variation, the music finally culminates in an extended passage of five-voice counterpoint. After a brief recapitulation, it continues building to an energetic and percussive end. The name refers the shimmering texture that is created through bowing, trilling, and ornamentation.
John Corigliano Voyage (1984)
Corigliano's Voyage, like Elliott Carter's Elegy, has been arranged for various instrumental ensembles by the composer since its origin as a choral work in 1971. While Corigliano has recomposed Voyage to resonate in the string ensemble, the text (Richard Wilbur's translation of Baudelaire's "l'Invitation au voyage") is not left far behind. As recorded here, Voyage is a song without words in the truest sense. The poem is echoed sweetly and simply in the music, and its sensuous excesses take the form of lush harmonies which, on occasion, gently push against the boundaries of tonality.
Musicians:
Brynn Albonese
Sarah Clendenning
Matthew Dane
Pascale Delache
Jennifer Gilbert
Jason Horowitz
Kyu-Young Kim
Sang Mee Lee
Jennifer Lucht
Daniel Panner
Katie Schlaikjer
Michael Shih
Lisa Suslowicz
Scott Yoo
Scott Yoo, Director
©1995 Albany Records
Box 5011, Albany, NY 12205-0011
All rights reserved. Unauthorized copying, reproduction, hiring, lending, public performance and broadcasting prohibited.
Recorded at The Campion Center, Weston Massachusetts - April 1994
Co-Producers: Dan Coleman and Richard Lim
Recording Engineers: Joel Gordon and George Kawamoto
Liner Notes: ©1995 by Dan Coleman except #5 ©1994 by Elena Ruehr
Group Photograph: Christian Steiner
Artwork and Design: SOL Graphic Design
Publishers by track:
1.copyright control
2.Boosey&Hawkes
3.Theadore Presser Co.
4. Peer International
5.copyright control
6.G. Schirmer
ALBANY RECORDS U.S.
P.O. Box 5011, Albany, NY 12205-0011
ALBANY RECORDS U.K.
Box 12, Warton, Carnforth
Lancashire LA5 9PD
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