Samy Moussa is a conductor and composer born in Montreal on June 1, 1984. He has collaborated regularly with a number of orchestras and ensembles, among them the Neue Vocalsolisten of Stuttgart, Germany, Finland’s Avanti! Chamber Orchestra, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the CBC Radio Orchestra in Vancouver, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, the Orchestre national de Lorraine in France, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Orchestre symphonique de Laval and the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra.
Samy Moussa studied composition and conducting at the faculty of music of the Université de Montréal, where his principal teacher was José Evangelista. In 2004 he studied conducting in the Czech Republic with Paolo Bellomia. Two years later he was invited to study in Finland with Magnus Lindberg and Kaija Saariaho as part of the international Summer Sounds Festival, where his music was programmed and discussed. He took part in several master classes there with Peter Eötvös and Oliver Knussen.
After finishing his studies in Montreal, Samy Moussa settled in Germany, where he still lives. He has studied composition there with Matthias Pintscher at the prestigious Hochschule für Musik und Theater München and is currently winding up his studies in conducting with Bruno Weil at the same institution. In 2008, the Acanthes centre in Metz, France, invited him to study with Salvatore Sciarrino, and shortly afterward the Voix Nouvelles composition course at the Fondation Royaumont, near Paris, invited him to study with Brian Ferneyhough.
His 2008-09 season has included the premiere of Polarlicht (2008) by the CBC Radio Orchestra in Vancouver under the direction of Alain Trudel; the premiere of Fragment sur l’Orestie, scène for 2 sopranos and instruments (2008) in Paris; a portrait concert dedicated entirely to him by the Munich Biennale in the series Klangspuren, where he conducted the premiere of a commission from the city of Munich called Rondeau pour ensemble (2009); the premiere of Rondeau II (2009) for string trio, a commission from the Siemens Art Program; and Cyclus pour orchestre (2007) on tour with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada.
During his 2009-10 season Samy Moussa will conduct among other works the premiere of his new opera at the Munich Biennale and see the first performance of his new concerto for accordion and orchestra. The season also includes several concerts with orchestras in Canada and Europe as composer and/or conductor.
For more information: www.samymoussa.com
Jose Van Dam, bass-baritone
World-renowned in concert, opera and recital, José van Dam is one of today's most honored interpreters of the bass-baritone repertoire. He has been heard in the music capitals of Europe, the Americas and Japan, singing at opera houses and concert halls under the world's premier conductors.
The past years Mr. Van Dam returned to the Metropolitan Opera for appearances as Golaud in Pelleas and Melisande, a role he also portrayed at the Opera de Bastille in Paris; and undertook again at the Bastille the title role in Messiaen 's St. Francois de Assise, a reprise of the role he sang to great acclaim in the opera's premiere. He returned to Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center for a pair of recitals: one dedicated to French songs and arias by Fauré, Debussy, Berlioz and Massenet, one featuring Schumann's Liederkreis as well as songs by Wolf and Schubert after appearing with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra with James Levine at Carnegie Hall for arias of Mozart and Mahler songs. Mr. van Dam appeared with Lorin Maazel and the New York Philharmonic in three performances of Berlioz' choral symphony Roméo et Juliette. Other engagements included a recital of Mahler lieder in Rotterdam; recitals in Belgium and at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris; Donizetti's Don Pasquale in Madrid and Wagner's Die Meistersinger in Zurich conducted by Franz Welser-Möst; masterclasses in Paris at the Opéra de la Bastille; and a tour of South America. In the "Ars Musica" festival of contemporary music at Brussels' Théâtre de la Monnaie, Mr. van Dam sang the title role of Oedipus in the world premiere of Oedipe sur la Route, the first opera of the Belgian composer, Pierre Bartholomée.
Since many years he is regularly invited to the world's major opera houses and festivals including l'Opéra de Paris, Covent Garden, La Scala, Vienna State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Brussels' Théâtre de la Monnaie, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Salzburg Festival, San Francisco Opera, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago. He has appeared in numerous operas in these locations portraying Falstaff, Wozzeck, Simon Boccanegra, Don Giovanni, the four villains in The Tales of Hoffmann, Boris Godunov, Sachs (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), Amfortas (Parsifal), the Flying Dutchman, Jochanaan (Salome) and Mephisto in Gounod's Faust. In recent seasons he sang his first Scarpia in Tosca, the title role in Gianni Schicchi, and Selim in Rossini's Il Turco in Italia.
Born in Brussels, José van Dam entered the Brussels Conservatory at age 17, graduating a year later with first prizes in voice and opera performance. Within a few years he had won four prizes in competitions, including the Bel Canto Competition in Liège; Concours "Ecole des Vedettes" in Paris; Concours de la Chanson in Toulouse; and the International Music Competition in Geneva. He made his operatic debut in Liège as Don Basilio in Rossini's The Barber of Seville and subsequently performed the role of Escamillo in Bizet's Carmen at La Scala, Paris Opera, and Covent Garden. Conductor Lorin Maazel asked Mr. van Dam to record Ravel's L'Heure Espagnole for Deutsche Grammophon, subsequently inviting him to join the Deutsche Oper in Berlin where he sang his first leading roles.
The art of José van Dam can be heard on an extensive discography. Among his award-winning recordings are Gounod's Faust, Enescu's Oedipe, Massenet's Don Quichotte, and Pelléas et Mélisande with Claudio Abbado for Deutsche Grammophon. He can be heard as Figaro in The Marriage of Figaro, in Carmen and Die Meistersinger conducted by Sir Georg Solti, Berlioz' Romeo et Juliette with the Boston Symphony led by Seiji Ozawa, and Simon Boccanegra with Claudio Abbado and the Orchestra of La Scala. Other releases include Mozart's Così fan tutte and Strauss' Salome with the Vienna Philharmonic, and many recordings with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic including Beethoven's Fidelio and Ninth Symphony, the Brahms German Requiem, Bruckner's Te Deum, Mozart's Requiem and Coronation Mass, Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, and Wagner's Parsifal. He is a two-time Grammy Award winner, in 1985 for his recording of Ravel songs with Pierre Boulez conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and in 1992, Best Opera Recording for Richard Strauss' Die Frau ohne Schatten.
Reflective etudes, etude reflections
French music is heir to a long, surprisingly continuous, tradition, a tradition under the aegis of sensuality more than anything. In other words, it is, from Rameau to Boulez, essentially a music of sounds, of tones. And it is as an heir to Rameau that Samy Moussa has presented certain of his works: a music of sensual energy, and immediately accessible despite the great refinement of its construction and its instrumental technique. It owes its energy to a very precise logic of musical momentum. Because what typically characterizes the compositions of Samy Moussa is anacrusis (the note or notes that precede a downbeat), that engine of the musical phrase and of its prosodic approach (the stresses and intonation patterns of a statement): it is the impetus of protasis (a clause that leads up to a second one, the apodosis), it is the continuity of apodosis, the dynamic of musical meta-language. It is this concept that, elevated to the rank of musical virtuosity, lends its character of Etude (extremely rare in an orchestral setting) to this new cycle of pieces to which Gegenschein and Zodiakallicht (Etudes Nos. 3 and 4) belong. Virtuosity, but above all the equilibrium of the layers of sound, the mix of tones, make these true etudes for orchestra, at one and the same time instrumental and musical; these are works that leave the musicians no respite from rigour in their approach, pushing them at every instant to maximum concentration.
These two etudes, commissioned by and dedicated to Kent Nagano, present common leitmotivs: ascending and descending scales, abrupt accents. However, whereas the third, strong in contrasts (roaring, against meditation; anacrusis, against apodosis), midway through adds a dance-like rhythm more and more present and assertive to this base material, the fourth remains more consistent, and undulates over its tempo, with its decelerations sometimes disturbed by brief gushings of sound, with its pianissimos and its delicate filigree tones (the quality of furtiveness is very much present here, those wispy celestial reflections scarcely visible in a totally black night), before ending on a colossal crescendo.
The first etude for orchestra, Draft, was premiered in France by the Orchestre National de Lorraine under the direction of Diego Masson in the summer of 2008 and the second, Polarlicht, by the CBC Radio Orchestra in Vancouver in November 2008 under Alain Trudel.
Matthieu Stepec
pianist and specialist in the music of Samy Moussa, residing in Berlin.
JACQUES IBERT
Born in Paris, August 15, 1890
Died in Paris, February 5, 1962
Quatre Chansons de Don Quichotte
Chanson du départ
Chanson à Dulcinée
Chanson du duc
Chanson de la mort
MAURICE RAVEL
Born in Ciboure, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, March 7, 1875
Died in Paris, December 28, 1937
Don Quichotte à Dulciéee
Chanson romanesque
Chanson épique
Chanson à boire
Don Quixote, the legendary “knight of the sorrowful countenance,” has become almost as well known in music as he is in literature. Richard Strauss’s symphonic poem is probably the most famous musical interpretation of Cervantes’ hero. Massenet’s opera and Ravel’s song cycle are also mainstays of the repertory, while the field is further enriched by composers from Caldara and Purcell in the early eighteenth century to Rodrigo and Hans Zender in the late twentieth.
Jacques Ibert’s contribution to this vast repertory takes the form of a cycle of four short songs for bass (or bass-baritone) composed in 1933. Originally, Ravel had been commissioned for music to be included in the film score for a production featuring the great Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin in the title role as Don Quixote. (Chaliapin had also starred in the premiere of Massenet’s opera Don Quichotte in 1910.) But Ravel proved dilatory, so the producers turned to Ibert, whose film credits included some thirty titles by the time he died.
G. W. Pabst’s silent film went on to become a cinema classic. Chaliapin’s vocal contributions were recorded on 78 rpm discs in 1933 with the composer conducting. (The original version called for full orchestra in all but one of the songs.) Though the cycle is more frequently heard with piano accompaniment, it is worth noting that Ibert assigned solos to such unlikely instruments as tuba, guitar, timpani and saxophone.
The texts were prepared for Ibert by Pierre de Ronsard (No. 1) and Alexandre Arnoux (Nos.2, 3 & 4). The first, “Chanson du départ,” is a reassuring picture of a sturdy new castle, built in the spirit of love and a powerful force against evil. Only great and valiant knights can enter its portals. The second is a tribute to the Don’s ladylove Dulcinea, who is ever in his mind, whether she is physically near or far from him. The Duke’s song is also delivered to “the Lady of my dreams, who exalts me” and who inspires him to “fight against all those who do not advocate your incomparable splendor and virtue.” The final song is an address from Don Quixote to Sancho Panza. Believing himself on the point of death, he exhorts his faithful squire to take heart and not to fear the afterlife that awaits his master.
In Ravel’s three short songs Don Quixote addresses his ladylove Dulcinea in homage. Composed in 1932, this was his last composition. The first performance was given by baritone Martial Singher in Paris on December 1, 1934. Ravel had intended to conduct, but ill health prevented him; instead, Paul Paray led the Colonne Orchestra. The first song is a highly fanciful Chanson romanesque, in which Don Quixote offers to fulfill whatever whimsical requests Dulcinea may present. It is set to the meter of the Spanish guajira, which alternates between 6/8 and 3/4. The second is a prayer at the shrine of the Madonna, set to the 5/4 meter of the Basque zortzico. Finally comes a drinking song in the manner of an Aragonese jota.
HECTOR BERLIOZ
Born in Côte-Saint-André, December 1, 1803
Died in Paris, March 8, 1869
Les Nuits d’été, Op. 7
Villanelle: Allegretto
Au Cimetière (Clair de lune): Andantino non troppo lento
L'Île inconnue: Allegro spiritoso
Although “cycle” is the term often used in the context of Les Nuits d'été (Summer Nights), these songs were not written as a group, nor do they constitute a cycle in the usual sense of the term, namely, a succession of songs linked by a narrative thread and shaped into a coherent whole. Yet the common theme of the Les Nuits d'été songs - unrequited or lost love - as well as the single author of the texts, do provide elements of common ground.
The texts Berlioz set in 1840-41 were written between 1835 and 1838 by the French poet Théophile Gautier (1811-1872). So marvelously atmospheric, expressive, imaginative and original are these six songs (of which José van Dam sings three tonight) that it seems scarcely believable they were barely known until the mid-twentieth century. Here is how noted Berlioz scholar David Cairns describes Les Nuits d'été: “The songs are characteristically Berliozian in their combination of large melodic span and irregular phrase length, of lyrical intensity and precision and clarity of texture; also in their fondness for the rocking rhythms of 6/8 time, and their concern not so much with precise word-setting as with exploring the fine shades of atmosphere and feeling contained within the general mood of the text.”
The opening song, “Villanelle” (a part-song related to the madrigal), is imbued with elegance and charm befitting the poem’s images of the coming of spring, walks through the woods and the beauty of nature. The bright, breezy character of this idyll is reflected in the freshness of the vocal line, and in the discreet accompaniment which gently intertwines on occasion with the voice for brief moments.
The profoundly melancholic “Au cimetière,” though soft throughout, speaks with vivid imagery of the tomb, faded flowers and lost souls fearing oblivion.
“L'Île inconnue” brings the cycle to a fulfilling close, deeply satisfying in its luminous glow and its “romantic, garrulous, quizzical voyage to the unattainable” (A.E.F. Dickinson), a never-never land where love lasts forever.
MAURICE RAVEL
Daphnis et Chloé (complete ballet)
For sheer opulence of orchestral color, for orgiastic rhythms and for ravishingly sensuous harmonies, Ravel’s ballet score Daphnis et Chloé remains one of the glories of twentieth-century music. The work was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev for the 1912 Paris season of his Ballets russes. The choreography was by Michel Fokine, the sets by Léon Bakst, and musical direction by Pierre Monteux. Nijinsky and Karsavina danced the title roles at the premiere on June 8, 1912.
The action takes place in a pastoral setting. To one side is a grotto, with statues of three nymphs carved into the entranceway. Emerging from an almost inaudible haze of sound come the motifs that will shape the entire score: a gently rocking two-note figure on the muted horns, an otherworldly arabesque from the solo flute, and a melody from the solo horn, signifying the love of Daphnis and Chloe.
Children enter bearing baskets of offerings for the nymph statues. As the stage fills with people, the music builds to a great, dignified climax of shimmering, glistening sound, capped by the entrance of a wordless chorus. This is followed immediately by the Danse religieuse, commencing with a gentle theme for the strings. This too eventually builds to a tremendous climax for the full orchestra and chorus with no fewer than three melodic strains stacked one upon the other.
The next several moments are given over to amorous flirtation and piques of jealousy. Beginning with a muted trumpet call answered by woodwinds, a bevy of girls surrounds Daphnis and dances with him while Chloe looks on resentfully. Then the tables are turned as young men, led by the uncouth cowherd Dorcon swoop Chloe into their midst and dance with her (gently swaying strings), to Daphnis’ annoyance. Neither Daphnis nor Chloe, as yet, has made any declaration of love, but both realize they are indeed in love with each other. All this takes place to delightfully playful music.
Dorcon attempts to kiss Chloe but is shoved aside by the jealous Daphnis. A dancing contest for the two is proposed, the winner of which will receive a kiss from Chloe as a prize. Dorcon’s dance is gauche and inept, signified by the galumphing bassoon trio. Raucous laughs from the audience punctuate Dorcon’s attempts. Daphnis, on the other hand, is all lightness and airy grace (flute trio and solo horn) as he goes seductively through his movements. Although Daphnis is clearly the winner, Dorcon attempts to have his kiss anyway, and is run off by the laughing crowd. Daphnis receives not only a kiss from Chloe but an all-enveloping embrace, while high in the violins, pianississimo and très expressif, is heard a radiant setting of the love motif. All leave except for Daphnis, who remains in a state of ecstasy.
Lyceion slips in (slinky clarinets in parallel thirds) and attempts to seduce Daphnis, who puts up only meek resistance. Finally she runs off, leaving Daphnis mildly perplexed. Troubled sounds now fill the air. Brazen fanfares are heard as girls begin streaming across the stage, pursued by a band of roving pirates. Realizing Chloe may be in trouble, Daphnis rushes off to find her, just as she runs in from the other direction. She throws herself at the base of the shrine and begs the nymphs for protection, but in vain. The pirates arrive and haul her off. Daphnis returns, sees one of Chloe’s sandals on the ground, and suspects the worst. He collapses.
The light fades. A mysterious, quivering sensation fills the air as the statues slowly come to life, one by one (the first to a solo flute, the second to the muted horn, the third to the clarinet), do a slow dance, and try to comfort Daphnis. The sound of the wind machine suggests that the god Pan may be near. The nymphs lead Daphnis to the altar of Pan, and Daphnis invokes his aid. All is now completely dark. The wordless chorus is heard in the distance, singing a cappella (unaccompanied) in ethereal, enchanting sounds. Gradually, the light of torches can be made out. They are from the pirates’ camp, which eventually comes into focus. The pirates do a long, coarse, warlike dance that gives the orchestra free reign to indulge in splendidly virtuosic effects.
Chloe is brought forward and is commanded to dance for the pirate captain Bryaxis. Her dance is one of supplication, begging for release. Twice she attempts to escape her captors, without success. Bryaxis makes amorous advances on her. Suddenly a strange light fills the night sky - rustling strings, glissandos in the harp, stinging effects from the muted horns, celesta. It is Pan, responding to Daphnis’ plea, come to rescue Chloe. As he comes nearer, the sounds become terrifying. Fantastic creatures scurry about, the earth shakes, and to a massive stroke on the tam-tam the god appears as a huge profile against the distant mountains. All panic and flee. Pan scoops up Chloe in a cloud and sets her down in the meadow nearby the grotto where Daphnis had earlier invoked Pan’s divine assistance. The scene shifts back to the pastoral setting of the opening.
This is the point where the famous Second Suite begins. Dawn breaks over the sleeping Daphnis, still estranged from his beloved Chloe. Rippling woodwinds, cascading glissandos in the harps and celesta, and a slowly rising melody in the strings combine in one of the richest, most sumptuous and magical sounds ever evoked from an orchestra. Birds are singing, shepherds are piping, brooks are bubbling, dew is glistening in the pristine morning air. As the sun bursts over the horizon, the orchestra responds with a climax of blinding brilliance.
Daphnis searches for, and, aided by Pan, finds Chloe. The old shepherd Lammon announces that, as a tribute to Pan for his help in reuniting Daphnis and Chloe, the two lovers will now mime the story of how Pan wooed and won the nymph Syrinx. During this amorous game of hide and seek, Pan/Daphnis cuts some reeds from the field where Syrinx/Chloe is hiding and lures her out with his seductive playing on the wooden flute (panpipes) he has fashioned. The languorous solos from the flute represent the god’s courtship and constitute one of the most famous passages in the entire orchestral repertory for this instrument. Daphnis and Chloe now publicly declare their love and everyone joins in a dance which grows to almost unbearable intensity and bacchanalian frenzy.
Robert Markow
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