Other Minds Special Programs ➔ Other Minds Presents: Nancarrow at 100 - A Centennial Celebration: Nancarrow Concert No. 2 (8 PM, Nov. 3, 2012), 2 of 8

Digital Audio

Event Type

Music

Origin

Other Minds

Identifier

OMP.2012.11.03.3.B

Program Series

Other Minds Presents

Program Length

94 min

Part

2 of 8

Dates

| broadcast
| 2012-11-03 | created

Description

This is the second concert of “Nancarrow at 100: A Centennial Celebration” a three day festival of films and music celebrating the life and work of Conlon Nancarrow. The festival was produced by Other Minds in collaboration with Cal Performances, the U. C. Berkeley Art Museum and the Pacific Film Archive and was held on November 2-4, 2012. This concert was the third of three events held at Hertz Hall on the U. C. Berkeley campus on November 3, 2012.

This concert featured the Calder String Quartet performing works by Conlon Nancarrow and Béla Bartók interspersed with the four movements of Thomas Adès’ string quartet “The Four Quarters.” Composed in 2010 the title of “The Four Quarters,” as with many of Adès’ instrumental compositions is suggestive but not programmatic, with each of the four movements presenting sonic realizations of varying moments of time or cycles and which vary in tempo and expressiveness.
Works by Nancarrow include his “String Quaret No. 1” composed around 1945. This early quartet “features a sequence of movements (fast, slow, fast) and specific thematic and harmonic figures that give it a neoclassical touch but also anticipates certain characteristics of the construction of Nancarrow’s later music for player piano.” These tastes of things to come includes the “use of isorhythmic sequences and ostinati” as well as the inclusion of a number of complicated canons in the later two movements. The second work by Nancarrow performed here is his “String Quartet No. 3” which was composed in 1987 and marks the later phase of his career during which his music had been rediscovered by a legion of friends and fans, and he had begun to experiment with less “textual density” and “irrational tempo relations” which had made much of his previous works difficult if not outright impossible for humans to perform. However while perhaps less technically challenging this work still showcase’s Nancarrow fascination with canonic structures and intricate tempos. Paul Usher’s arrangement of Nancarrow’s “Study No. 33” originally composed for player piano but transcribed for string quartet highlights the difficulty of adapting such radical tempo changes and probably represents the “absolute limits of what can be transcribed” for such a traditional instrumentation. The fact that Usher was successful is both a testimony to his considerable skill but also the richness of the source material.
After an intermission the concert concluded with Béla Bartók’s “String Quartet No. 5” composed in 1934. Along with Igor Stravinsky, Nancarrow has said that Béla Bartók was his greatest influence. While well known for quoting folk music of his native Hungary in many of his works, the “String Quartet No. 5” while clearly influenced by folk idioms, refrains from actualy quotation of such music. Instead it is vital and expressive composition “consisting of five movement, arranged in an arch: the first and last movements, which are fast, share thematic material; the second and fourth are slow and similar in mood; and the third, a scherzo, is the keystone of the entire work.”

Note: Quotes taken from the concert program guide featuring notes by Dr. Richard E. Rodda on “The Four Quarters,” Felix Meyer on works by Nancarrow, and Nigel Bolland on Bartók

Genres

20th century classical
New music

Musical Selections

String Quartet No. 1 (ca. 1945) (11:26) / Conlon Nancarrow

Performers

Calder String Quartet:
Benjamin Jacobson, violin
Andrew Bulbrook, violin
Jonathan Moerschel, viola
Eric Byers, cello

Subjects

20th century classical
New music
String quartets

Related Event

Nancarrow at 100: A Centennial Celebration

Related place

Berkeley (Calif.) (was recorded at)

Related Entities

Other Minds (Organization)
Calder Quartet
Nancarrow, Conlon, 1912-1997
Jacobson, Benjamin
Bulbrook, Andrew
Moerschel, Jonathan
Byers, Eric (Violoncellist)