Dialogues
Susan Narucki, soprano
Boris Berman, piano
Brahms Fantasies for piano, Op. 116
Schoenberg The Book of the Hanging Gardens, Op. 15
Debussy Children’s Corner
Mussorgsky The Nursery
Dialogues brings together works separated by time and by cultures, which, nevertheless, share certain affinities. Hearing them together illuminates some of their less obvious qualities, and in juxtaposition, individual pieces seem to provide a commentary on each other.
Brahms’ Fantasies, op. 116, written in 1892, present an intimate, vulnerable side of the composer, moving away from imposing statements and sweeping Romantic lines in the effort to capture the elusive, ever-changing twilight melancholy. Schoenberg’s Book of the Hanging Gardens on the text of Stefan George, composed in 1908-09 represents his break away from tonal writing; sparse textures and delicately shaped melodic lines of the voice and the piano provide a powerful counterpoint to the exquisitely refined and lush poetry. It might seem as though the Expressionist esthetics of Schoenberg’s work and his radical musical language left the late Romantic tradition of Brahms’ piano pieces far behind. However, these compositions share an emotional climate of feverish yet understated languor.
While Brahms and Schoenberg were part of the same tradition, culturally and musically, the backgrounds of Mussorgsky and Debussy were very different. The self-taught Russian who never acquired all of the professional skills considered necessary for a composer and the urbanely sophisticated Frenchman seem to have had very little in common. However, this did not prevent Debussy from recognizing the remarkable originality of Mussorgsky’s The Nursery (written in 1868-72) and to proclaim it “a masterpiece” In 1906-08 Debussy composed his own piano suite, The Children’s Corner ; unlike the Mussorgsky songs, these works show a sophisticated adult who pretends to be a child; he amuses himself with a stylization of the fashionable dance, into which he even sneaks a parody of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. Thus, in spite of the similar subject matters of the two cycles, the differences in the authors’ approaches, and indeed, of their psychological make-up become evident. Here, too, we overhear a dialogue between two very different composers, each in pursuit of his own psychological and musical truth.
For more information on Dialogues contact:
Info@susannarucki.net
Chance Encounter
Chance Encounter brings the music of composer Lisa Bielawa to outdoor, public spaces. Soprano Susan Narucki and members of The Knights, the Brooklyn based chamber orchestra founded by brothers Eric and Colin Jacobsen, are situated in two groups a half a block away from each other. As the piece progresses, the groups change as members move from one location to another, walking among the listeners, changing the color and texture of the sound. Chance Encounter was co-conceived by Bielawa and Narucki as a way to bring the music of our time to the public in a different way, offering whoever walks by the pleasure of simply hearing something new and beautiful performed by extraordinary musicians.
Lisa Bielawa’s unique music is the centerpiece of Chance Encounter; the thirty minute work is characterized by clarity, bold lines, and skillfully orchestrated to emerge in the midst of an open-air acoustic. The text consists of overheard snippets of conversation in public spaces that Bielawa and Narucki gathered over the course of a year. Woven together and transformed, the resulting songs offer a glimpse into contemporary life: by turns whimsical, perplexing and full of longing.
Chance Encounter reflects the way we experience sound, music and language today: with overlapping textures, in fragments, colliding exuberantly, and at times as only the shadow of a shadow. There is no formal boundary between listener and musician, only an unexpected encounter with living art and the beauty of sound.
Chance Encounter is a Project of Creative Capital.
For more information contact:
Info@susannarucki.net
For booking, please contact:
Daniel Brodney
917.676.1858
chanceencounter@earthlink.net
Ives and Memory
Susan Narucki, soprano
Donald Berman, piano
The songs of Charles Ives could be described as a kind of scrapbook. Wiley Hitchcock, in his introduction to the critical edition of Ives' 129 Songs, observes,
“Into such a receptacle Ives tossed irregularly, if not casually, his reactions —in the form of songs— memories, personalities, places, events, discoveries, ideas, visions, and fantasies in his life.”
Captured memories — real or idealized, distant or near— are the materials for the music.
We hear surface details which evoke familiar sounds and draw us into the music, such as the spinning-wheel figurations of Two Little Flowers, the popular song snippet which begins The Things Our Fathers Loved or the bass drum thumps that propel the march General William Booth Enters into Heaven. These details develop and deepen, and we become aware of one moment, one universal experience— not always great or grand— but captured perfectly in sound.
Ives and Memory includes Ives’ early songs to the works of his maturity. Susan Narucki and Donald Berman have collaborated on The Light that Is Felt: Songs of Charles Ives, scheduled for release on New World Records in autumn of 2008.
For more information, please contact: info@susannarucki.net