Cycles often provide a source of reassurance and contentment, but at times, our position on the circle is unknowable – when our proximity to the end of an orbit could span anywhere from milliseconds to decades.
As we approach the concluding months of our final season together, we welcome back three of our earliest collaborators – composer Eliza Brown and Scrag Mountain Music co-founders Mary Bonhag (soprano) and Evan Premo (composer, bass) – for a community-spirited experience comprising three enchanting works that trace the cyclic nature of existence…and the stories we tell in an attempt to find our bearing.
Because these artists are also dear friends, we are especially pleased to offer a moderated discussion with them immediately following the performance.
Eliza Brown
Evan Premo and Mary Bonhag
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
6pm Pre-Concert Reception
6:30pm Performance
8pm Post-Concert Reception (generously sponsored by Helen Harvey Mills)
ABOUT THE MUSIC
Co-commissioned by Spektral and Scrag Mountain Music, Eliza Brown’s the light that blurred the stars is a poly-stylistic encounter between the quartet and soprano Mary Bonhag. A stirring suite that grows outward from the text, this setting of five poems by Susan Stewart circle the impermanence of human agency whether through the lens of a salacious wartime affair or the tableau of a father dancing with his infant, or even in the examination of the interdependence between a seed and a cinder. Imprinting a cycle of her own, Eliza allows the music to evaporate into the strains of her String Quartet No. 1 – one of the very first pieces by a living composer that Spektral performed, soon after its inception.
Similarly made possible by the solitude of life during a pandemic, Evan Premo’s String Quintet No. 1, “My River Runs to Thee” embraces the truth that cycles often imply change, incremental or grand. Beginning with raindrops and ultimately swelling out to the sea, a watershed is captured here in sound. But while the rain can be trusted to time and again serve as a natural recapitulation, new obstacles create new paths for the returning rivulets of water as they hasten into a river. As the piece nears its conclusion, the verse of Emily Dickenson introduces a witness into this landscape as the river sweeps to the sea. She hopes, fervently, that her own, eventual exit and return to the source will be a contribution quite this exquisite.
If a shortlist were created of string quartets with which a western classical ensemble might discover (or recover) its bearings, surely Claude Debussy’s String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10 would make the cut. Like a weather-beaten guidepost bearing faint but familiar markings, this score is an irresistible invitation in an unfamiliar direction – at least the dominant direction of string quartet writing at the time. As a music critic, Debussy was not discreet about his desire for a less rules-heavy (translation: less Germanic) trajectory for contemporary music. The cycle had become claustrophobically predictable.
It is, perhaps, an astonishing claim about a piece that is near-ubiquitous on string quartet repertoire lists, but Debussy’s sole foray into the genre remains regenerative to both players and audiences. It seems to provide new, newly-gessoed canvases for each ensemble that studies it. Situated on a program amongst illustrations as vivid as, “A knife could give up on patience” (the light that blurred the stars) or, “Blue sea, wilt thou welcome me?” (String Quartet No. 1, “My River Runs to Thee”), here the wordless Debussy offers Spektral the space in which to tell a story of its own.
PROGRAM
the light that blurred the stars (Chicago premiere) – Eliza Brown
My River Runs to Thee (Chicago premiere) – Evan Premo
String Quartet in G minor, L 85 Op. 10 – Claude Debussy