Bringing New Music into Life: Collaboration with the Composer Peter Lieuwen

Peter Lieuwen's Bright River (2014) written for me and Grace will receive its world premiere on July 21st at Lyceum Chamber Music Series in Alexandria, VA. The work will also be performed at ICA's ClarinetFest in Madrid, Spain later in July. 

I first met Peter in 2009 while working on his piece, Gulfstream, as a member of enhake, during our emerging years as graduate students at Florida State University. We were invited to perform Peter’s work at the opening recital of FSU’s biennial New Music Festival, and this very difficult piece prompted us to put an untold amount of time and effort on learning it intimately. In the end, we became personally attached to the work and gave a very satisfying performance. Peter, who were present at the recital, became a good friend of ours. Since then, enhake has given about 15 additional performances of Gulfstream at various places, including Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall and Texas A&M University (College Station, where everything from rental car to hotel room seemed to be extra large), where Peter is a faculty member and composer-in-residence. We also recorded the work for our 2011 Naxos album, which was later entitled “Gulfstream”! The CD received number of rave reviews and was selected as recording of the month by major journals such as BBC Music Magazine and MusicWeb International. Now thinking back, it is truly amazing how a serendipitous first meeting can lead to such exciting venture! I always advise my students to cherish every opportunity they get to meet with new colleagues as you never know where it will lead them. 

enhake with Peter Lieuwen during their residency at Texas A&M - College Station, TX in 2009

Few years after I started working at TTU and joined its faculty ensemble, Cumberland Quintet, Peter asked me if we would be interested in looking at his recent woodwind quintet entitled Windjammer. Fortunately, my quintet colleagues are always after exploring new works and agreed to commit to learn and record the piece. The unrelenting pacing of Windjammer demanded utmost stamina from all members of the quintet and posed a myriad of challenges, but the piece really grew on us in the end. Our quintet recorded the piece on August 2013 with the help of Peter and his recording engineer Brad Sayles who works for the Houston Symphony Orchestra, and the CD was recently released on MSR Record. 

Burgess Fall in Cookeville, TN

During Peter and Brad’s visit to Cookeville, I had a chance to take them to nearby Burgess Fall. It is a quite impressive site without being too overwhelming. Peter’s music is often “inspired by nature and legend,” and I particularly enjoyed his reference to water. I asked him if he would be willing to write a clarinet-piano duo for me and my wife, and Peter graciously agreed to move the project forward. 

Peter and Brad enjoying a pool game at my house during their visit to Cookeville

Peter already wrote several works for the clarinet, including a concerto for clarinet and orchestra, “River of Crystal Light,” written for the renowned British clarinetist David Campbell. Below is the YouTube link to Campbell’s recording of "River of Crystal Light":

"River of Crystal Light" (1999) for Clarinet, Harp, Piano and Strings David Campbell, clarinet/Texas Music Festival Orchestra conducted by Franz Anton Krager from Albany TROY928 http://www.albanyrecords.com An attractive array of shimmering, shuddering sonorities. The music of the outstanding American composer Peter Lieuwen has been described by The New York Times as "an attractive array of shimmering, shuddering sonorities."

I was thrilled to receive the final draft of our piece Bright River from Peter last September. This was the most exciting commission for our husband-wife duo to date, and we have been preparing hard since the start of this summer for our upcoming premiere and performances. After several years of ongoing collaboration, I became so familiar with Peter’s musical language and sound world. It helped me greatly in conceptualizing the musical ideas, and I knew exactly how I wanted to bring the score into the performance. As a result, past few weeks of my work has been mainly dealing with various issues on technical execution and acoustic realization.

An example of ever-ascending phrases which require a great deal of tonal and dynamic control

Some passages require extra attention to the acoustics of our instrument: how we want the music to sound versus how it actually sounds

Peter's use of extreme range of the clarinet in some of the most delicate and melodic passages poses many challenges. By taking greater liberty  on dynamic and articulation, I sometimes had to come up with creative ways to produce the desired sound and effect. The piano part also turned out to be quite hard with non-repeating patterns which involve very difficult fingerings. All of these problems are worth overcoming as the piece is completely filled with shimmering beauty, rapturous joy, and scintillating colors. As our ensemble has made a significant progress over the past few weeks, I feel such raw enthusiasm I have not experienced from playing new music in a while. Both I and Grace are truly looking forward to introducing Bright River to our audiences in our upcoming concerts. If you are attending this year's ClarinetFest, please plan on coming to my recital on the 22nd!

Here is the composer's program note:

The inspiration for Bright River (2014) is found in the visual and auditory intricacies of rivers as they evolve from rivulets and continually fluctuate between waterfalls, violent rapids and tranquil pools as the terrain changes.  In Bright River the piano presents a constant flowing motion that is placid and lyrical in some passages while spirited and syncopated in others.  The clarinet presents a bold awakening introductory gesture and weaves in and out of the musical fabric as the piece moves forward.  Drama and tension are enhanced with pandiatonic sections juxtaposed with those employing the diminished (half-step/whole-step) scale.  The melody is often presented  “in harmony” at the interval of the 7th or 9th creating a translucent musical aura.

Bright River was written for and is dedicated to Wonkak Kim and Grace Choi.

On our recent Facetime "rehearsal" with Peter Lieuwen

On our recent Facetime "rehearsal" with Peter Lieuwen

[Press Clipping] Guldstream selected as "CD of the Month" by MusicWeb International

MusicWeb International "CD of the Month" - enhake's Gulfstream

By Brian Reinhart

This is a very fine tasting menu of American chamber music for violin, cello, clarinet and piano. Its four works are united by only one common thread - their extremely high quality. We start with a Libby Larsen work from 2010 and work back to Aaron Copland’s Sextet which adds a violin and viola.

The title of Larsen’s Rodeo Queen from Heaven sounds witty, but it’s really based on a different kind of celestial visitor; the inspiration is a hand-painted wooden carving by Arthur Lopez, of the Madonna bearing a gun and wearing a rodeo costume. Larsen’s piece somehow manages to capture the spirit of this: the piano struts about brash cowboy fashion in the opening moments, and snippets of lyrical Americana-type melody are juggled with wit, rhythmic spunk, and maybe a dash of sarcasm. The heart of the work, though, is a central series of modal meditations on more religiously-toned ideas.

Peter Lieuwen - born in Utrecht, raised in New Mexico - contributes Gulfstream, from 2007, a work which “reacts to his aural impression of the Gulfstream [sic] current,” partly inspired by global warming. That kind of description usually means I’ll hate a piece: compositions inspired by global warming? An ocean current can yield aural impressions? Will there be a sequel about air currents depositing Chinese industrial pollution over New Mexico and west Texas? But Lieuwen’s piece does indeed aspire to evoke, for chamber ensemble, the rough-and-tumble of a warm seascape. By and large it succeeds; it’s quite a pleasure to listen to, and some of the quieter passages (as after 2:45) are frankly wonderful, as is the coda.

For me, though, the highlight is Peter Schickele’s quartet of 1982. Schickele is well-known as the brains behind P.D.Q. Bach, the “last and least” of Bach’s sons (1807-1742!); Schickele has “discovered” such P.D.Q. works as the 1712 Overture, Grand Serenade for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion, The Short-Tempered Clavier, and a Pervertimento for Bicycle, Bagpipes, and Balloons. Even when he’s writing as himself, Schickele is accustomed to high spirits: among other things, he’s written a tango for four bassoons based on the ‘Tristan chord’ and an Unbegun Symphony, of which there is only a scherzo and finale.

The quartet here is not nearly as silly as that, so don’t get your hopes up (or down). It is good-humored, but in a friendly, neighborly way, like a warm handshake. Its opening evokes rural Americana, with plenty of good folksy tunes, and its centerpiece is a genuinely emotional elegy in muted colors. The finale is Schickele being witty, but not over-the-top; his humor here is along the lines of Haydn, teasing and playful. One would have to be cold-hearted to dislike music as affectionately done as this.

One would probably also have to dislike Aaron Copland, whose Sextet rounds out the recital. This is a reduction of his Second (‘Short’) Symphony, and it is vintage Copland with the composer’s typical language and incisive rhythm. There’s less of the expansive ‘American west’ feel of his populist music, but it is both playful and confident music anyway.

enhake- is an award-winning quartet which is especially active on the contemporary music circuit. The Libby Larsen piece which opens the program was commissioned and premiered (at Carnegie Hall) by the group, and Peter Lieuwen’s Gulfstream is dedicated to them as well. They certainly do the composers proud, and cannot be faulted on any grounds: their advocacy is impassioned and their playing is more or less exemplary (maybe the cellist’s bow clacks a little too harshly in louder passages). The recording is good, but turn up the volume a bit or else - by some odd trick - it sounds as if everyone is seated very far apart from each other. This is for fans of good and enjoyable contemporary chamber music, or American music in general, or for those who want to hear Peter Schickele when he’s not writing the aural equivalent of slapstick.

Source: http://www.musicweb-international.com/clas...

[Press Clipping] Classical Music Sentinel Review of Gulfstream CD

from Classical Music Sentinel published in January 2012

GULFSTREAM - American Chamber Music - Enhake Quartet - Corinne Stillwell (Violin) - Pamela Ryan (Viola) - 636943969229 - Released: November 2011 - Naxos 8.559692

Libby Larsen - Rodeo Queen of Heaven
Peter Lieuwen - Gulfstream
Peter Schickele - Quartet for Clarinet, Violin, Cello and Piano
Aaron Copland - Sextet for Clarinet, Piano and String Quartet

The impressive and comprehensive American Classics series of recordings from Naxos keeps growing in leaps and bounds, and has by now pretty well covered every square mile of the American musical landscape, but still manages to offer up world premiere recordings of works from both new and well established composers. And this new CD is no exception.

Both the Libby Larsen Rodeo Queen of Heaven (2010) and the Peter Lieuwen Gulfstream (2007) are making their first recorded appearance, and certainly present themselves as solid new proponents of American music. The Larsen was commissioned by the members of enhake, and its frenetic and nervous energy serves to emphasize this ensemble's tight and rapid-fire delivery. The Lieuwen work on the other hand, with its flowing forward momentum underpinned by a dark and shifting undercurrent (pun intended), brings out these musicians more expressive and emotional qualities. For me, the show-stopper on this CD is the Quartet for Clarinet, Violin, Cello and Piano by Peter Schickele, (the real-life alter ego of P.D.Q. Bach). It is at times melancholy, at times jazzy, dark, tongue in cheek, nostalgic and strangely evocative. All aspects which are well defined by the fine playing of this ensemble. And it goes without saying that the Sextet for Clarinet, Piano and String Quartet by Aaron Copland, with the added participation of Corinne Stillwell (Violin) and Pamela Ryan (Viola), couldn't have been better chosen to close a CD on American chamber music. A challenging work in all respects, be they musical or technical, but nothing that this group of musicians can't handle with panache.

The common denominator within all the pieces on this new CD is the focus of attention on the clarinet. These pieces all seem to use the clarinet as the central pivot to the musical drama, and clarinetist Wonkak Kim slips into that role effortlessly, always leading the way where necessary, or taking on the task of being the music's main backbone. His playing always serves the music first and foremost, and never draws undo attention to itself, a remarkable feat when you consider his constant presence within the music's fabric. A sign of superior musicianship, no doubt. 

Jean-Yves Duperron - January 2012

Source: http://www.classicalmusicsentinel.com/coll...