The evening concert by Ensemble Opera Diversa entitled The Face of Water, which took place on 4 June outdoors in the atrium of the Moravian Library in Brno, was preceded by a morning discussion between Professor Miloš Štědron and Associate Professor Vladimír Maňas from the Institute of Musicology at Masaryk University. They both enjoyed an engaging talk on the theme of water in art (from Gregorian chant to the early 20th century), concluding with a sample of the edition and the playing of a recording of Janáček's symphony The Danube. The concert, conducted by Gabriela Tardonová and inspired by the theme of water, featured one world and three Czech premières. Harpist Dominika Kvardová appeared as a soloist.
The opening composition Shanty - Over the Sea (2020) by the British composer, pianist and conductor Thomas Adès (*1971) is based on the specific genre of traditional folk (work) seafaring songs. The short (eight-minute) piece of music builds on a swinging melodic refrain and colourful transformations of the string orchestra. Using glissos, pizzicatos, string harmonics and microintervals, the composer creates a palette of varied surfaces and soundscapes that may have initially seemed out of tune. What at first seemed like a mistake, however, soon turned out to be deliberate on the part of the composer, gradually gaining in sonority and richness of tone towards the final pure fifth chord.
The composition TAKES APART (2024) by the Přerov native and multi-genre artist Martin Konvička (*1993) was inspired by the ensemble. Its composer was inspired by the constant changes in an intimate relationship. "I think of proximity, expansion, contraction, intertwining, surrender and acceptance," writes Martin Konvička in his commentary on the piece. As with the first composition, he works with musical material and a string orchestra dominated by tremolo playing, and also an initial large musical space with low dynamics and a sense of infusing new movement into these areas. Konvička takes his time in introducing new material (motifs, themes), thus stepping up the inner tension of the work. TAKES APART is a piece that evolves and is in constant flux, under the guise of a fragile, subtle, personal statement. In this case, too, the arrangement by the Ensemble Opera Diversa (EOD) can be described as precise and expressively sensitive, although the performance was not without some minor hesitancy in intonation (primarily in the first violin).
The title of A Way A Lone II (1981) comes from the last words of James Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake. Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu returns to the novel in two other works, Riverrun and Far Calls, which often tend to be combined into a triptych. The first of these compositions was first written for string quartet, and although it is not part of the composer's water cycle, it also contains Takemitsu's characteristic motif eS-E-A. The audience had the opportunity to hear A Way A Lone II in an instrumentally extended version for string orchestra performed by the EOD. In the dramaturgy of the evening, Takemitsu's musical language represented a certain change towards a denser texture, with the piece showing a considerable dissonance, a greater mass of sound and a brooding, almost depressive character, which, among other things, was underlined by the specific timbre of the con sordino at the end of the work.
The end of the evening belonged to the harp. Dominika Kvardová played the role of soloist in a concert with the thematic title Mearra (2016), the word for sea in one of the Sami languages. Although the harp has plenty of space in the work, the composition cannot be described as a concertante work as such. In it, Finnish contemporary composer Kalevi Aho (*1949) pays homage to the culture of Lapland, which he also translates into musical ideas in two other movements, Eanan (earth) and Dolla (fire). The three attacca movements, spiced with Bartókian pizzicato, quartet progressions, sonorities and imitations of seagulls, were a struggle for the orchestra at times. Although this is not usual for the ensemble, at certain points with Mearr there were evident rhythmic mismatches between the orchestra members, as well as between them and the harpist, accompanied by some hesitancy in the intonation. However, despite these criticisms, it can be described as a successful performance.
The June concert of the Ensemble Opera Diversa saw a move to a new space, a farewell to the Diversa spring, and the water theme tuned up the mood for the start of summer, after which we can look forward to another encounter with this Brno ensemble.
Programme:
Thomas Adès: Shanty - Over the Sea for strings (2020) CZECH PREMIÈRE
Martin Konvička: TAKES APART for strings (2024) PREMIÈRE
Tōru Takemitsu: A Way A Lone II for strings (1981) CZECH PREMIÈRE
Kalevi Aho: Mearra for harp and strings (2016) CZECH PREMIÈRE
Dominika Kvardová – harp
Gabriela Tardonová - conductor
Ensemble Opera Diversa
Tuesday 4 June 2024 at 7 p.m., Moravian Library Atrium Brno
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