• Re-Imagining Schubert with Stephen Porter
  • Into the Chaotic Dreams with Yumi Suehiro
Re-Imagining Schubert with Stephen Porter1 Into the Chaotic Dreams with Yumi Suehiro2

Fifteen-Minutes-of-Fame: Re-Imagining Schubert with Stephen Porter

Composer's Voice
OCTOBER 24, 2015 2:30 PM
SYMPHONY SPACE
Leonard Nimoy Thalia
2537 Broadway, New York, NY 10025

Fifteen-Minutes-of-Fame is 15 one-minute works by different composers written for a specific performer or ensemble.

The theme of this Fifteen-Minutes-of-Fame is “Re-Imagining Schubert.” The works interact in some way with the music or compositional spirit of Franz Schubert. It can be a quotation or pastiche; the connection can be as direct or indirect as the composer imagines.

Stephen Porter, piano

In 2015 Stephen Porter's acclaimed New York recital at SubCulture was praised as “a powerful revelation” by New York Arts, “as if the voice of the composer were speaking to us.” He has appeared as a soloist in London, Paris, Lake Como, Sarajevo, Istanbul and Rio de Janeiro, among other cities. Mr. Porter was named artist-resident of the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris for Debussy’s 150th birthday year, and invited to perform the composer’s 24 Preludes. His recitals in Europe were followed by a guest appearance on NPR's Diane Rehm Show. The Boston Musical Intelligencer describes his performance this season as "simply spellbinding," and in the new biography Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph, author Jan Swafford calls his playing “unforgettable.”
Leise flehen die Lieder (The songs beckon softly)
Paul Cowell
Paul Cowell played percussion for many years, but after becoming more interested in Baroque music, switched to continuo playing. He is a composer and arranger; his pieces have been played on the BBC and ABC, and performed across the UK, USA and Australia. He lives and works in London.
Although it may not sound like it, Leise flehen die Lieder (The songs beckon softly) is derived from Schubert's songs. An accompanying figure from one characteristic motifs from several places, harmonies from others. These are worked up into a repeating form like those Schubert used.
Thoughts on the Rosebud of the Heath
Konrad Harley
Konrad Harley is a Canadian composer, organist, and music theorist. In 2014, he completed a PhD dissertation in music theory at the University of Toronto entitled “Harmonic Function in the Music of Sergei Prokofiev.” "Thoughts on the Rosebud of the Heath" is a scherzetto that alludes to the theme of Schubert's song "Heidenröslein," D.257
Thoughts on the Rosebud of the Heath: This short scherzo recalls the tune of one of Schubert's loveliest little songs--"Heidenroslein" (D.257).
Schubertango
Juan María Solare
Juan María Solare, born in Argentina, works in Germany as composer, pianist (contemporary & tango) and teaching at the University of Bremen and at the Hochschule fuer Kuenste Bremen. His music has been performed in five continents. Fifteen CDs of different performers include at least one piece of him.
Schubertango: Tango music has more to do with Franz Schubert than with any other classical composer. Harmonies and types of melody are extremely similar. Such similarities cease, at the latest, when we come to rhythm. This miniature shows how Schubert's melodies can be flawlessly integrated into the musical language of tango. If one doesn't know the original pieces, you will not even recognize at all that there is a quotation
An Augmented Reduction of Impromptu No. 2
Alex Conde
Alex Conde, San Francisco jazz-flamenco-classical pianist and composer, graduated Spanish conservatories and Boston’s Berklee College of Music, was recently Piano Chair, Oakland School for the Arts, collaborates with jazz and flamenco luminaries, performing in the U.S. and internationally. His Descarga for Monk will be released through ZOHO Music February 2015.
An Augmented Reduction of Impromptu No. 2: The romanticism of Schubert’s Impromptus captivated me when I was a boy of 12 studying piano in Spain, and the melodies have stayed with me my whole life. Here I have re-imagined them as my own Impromptu, letting the harmonies flow with the original characteristic melody of Impromptu No. 2.
ff (Frozen Franz)
João Pedro Oliveira
João Pedro Oliveira completed a PhD in Music at Stony Brook University. He has received numerous prizes and awards, including three Prizes at Bourges Electroacoustic Music Competition, the prestigious Magisterium Prize, the Giga-Hertz Special Award, 1st Prize in Metamorphoses competition, etc..
ff (Frozen Franz) is part of a collection of pieces based on classical and romantic composers music: transformed and suspended in time, as if the music became frozen. Frozen Franz is based on the lied Der Leiermann.
One-Minute Waltz
Gyuli Kambarova
Russian composer and pianist Gyuli Kambarova has Developed a unique voice in her compositions; her works incorporate an incredible mixture of Eastern sounds and classical techniques. Gyuli is a graduate of the prestigious Rostov State Rachmaninov Conservatory, and received two Masters of Music with honors.
One-Minute Waltz: Light gentle waltz brings you to the romantic atmosphere of the XIX Century ballrooms. Pastoral middle part of this piece comes to the dramatic climax and resolves in the main theme that is reach on polyphony imitations. The end of the waltz scatters in the "sky".
Reducción al absurdo
Rafael Gutiérrez Gandía
Composer Rafael Gutiérrez Gandía (Seville-Spain). In 2013 he was finalist in the international Oberon Quartet Composition Contest in Richmond (USA) for his string quartet Autumn Dream. In 2014 his piece Spiral Void (for clarinet double bass) is selected for The Vienna University to be part of Physik Et Musik in Academy Traunkirchen .His electroacoustic piece Giros II is released in O Festival Música Viva e a Trienal de Arquitectura de Lisboa . In 2015 his electric guitar composition Barrett was released in " Composition Workshop / extended techniques on traditional instruments and Composers Forum " at the Conservatory Rafael Orozco of Cordoba ( Spain).
My piece Reducción al absurdo is inspired by the chromaticism and large tessitura of Schubert but led the XXI century.My work has free form. Piano pedal never lifted to create a feeling of constant harmonic notes to collide against other.
Artemis Limnaia
Justin Blackburn
Justin Blackburn’s chili recipe has won top honors in every major contest worldwide. Bootlegged recordings of him reading the collected works of Emanuel Morgan and Anne Knish swept the 2002 Grammys. Justin Blackburn is the man every man would love to be.
He commanded the light to shine out of darkness: Artemis Limnaia
After 'Estrella und Alfonso'
Dominic Sewell
Dominic Sewell is a classicaly-trained composer and orchestrator. He is a graduate of Oxford and the Royal College where he was a PRSF scholar having studied with Joseph Horovitz. After initial success in writing classical music for the concert hall, Dominic expanded his remit to encompass writing music for film & TV.
After 'Estrella und Alfonso' takes as its inspiration the opening few bars of Schubert's 'Alfonso und Estrella'. This piece explores various ways in which the ornament can be expanded and contracted within a miniature structure as if cast in the role of one member of a four-hand piano duet.
Valse Douce-Amère (“Bittersweet Waltz”)
Erik Branch
Erik Branch is a native of New York City, and received a BA and MA in Music (Composition) from Hunter College. He lives near Orlando, Florida, where he is active as a pianist, musical director, composer/arranger, operatic tenor, and actor on stage and screen.
Valse Douce-Amère (“Bittersweet Waltz”) is intended to suggest the bittersweet, intimate, lyric, quality of much of Schubert's music, and like many of his pieces, it derives from a written-out improvisation. Not a pastiche of Schubert's style, but an attempt to translate something of his compositional spirit into 21st century terms.
Schubert Shadow II
Jona Kümper
Jona Kümper, pianist and composer from Germany, studied piano in Dortmund and Cologne and received a graduate recital in 2003. In 2008 he received the Neuss Composition Award, in 2012/13 he won 3rd Prices in the International Composition Competition Sofia and at the Carl-von-Ossietsky-Award, Oldenburg.
Schubert Shadow II is a short piece between transcription of and comment to Schubert´s famous song “Ihr Bild” – “Her picture” from his late song cycle “Schwanengesang”. It is a shadow of it. You can hear Schubert´s melody not at the beginning but by the end of the sounds.
Etude on Schubert’s Name
Timothy J. Bowlby
Born in Wolfville Nova Scotia, Timothy J. Bowlby holds degrees from Acadia University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is Senior Lecturer in Music and Film Studies at Lewis University in Romeoville Illinois.
My Etude on Schubert’s Name is based on a seven-note cell derived, via soggetto cavato, from the musical notes in “Franz Peter Schubert."
Impromptu
Edward Ruchalski
Edward Ruchalski has been commissioned by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Helen Boatwright, and Syracuse's Society for New Music. His compositions have been performed at Lincoln Center, Mass MOCA, and at the Festival of Miami. Ruchalski is the Professor of Practice in music at Le Moyne College, Syracuse, NY.
Impromptu was composed after listening to Krystian Zimerman’s recording of Schubert’s Impromptu’s D 899 and D 935 (one of my favorite recordings). I was inspired by Schubert’s use of ternary form, his monothematic ideas and the clarity of his melodic line.
Marche Noble
Douglas Madison
Douglas Madison is a retired computer programmer. He studied composition with Robert McBride and Robert Muczynski at the University of Arizona, and with Sarah Dawson in Boulder, Colorado. He has no published works.
Marche Noble is a reworking of Waltz No. 3 in Schubert’s 12 Valses Nobles, D.969, and realizes what Schubert might have written had he chosen to compose a march rather than a waltz.
Maiden & Death
Norberto Oldrini
Maiden & Death: The wind of the times has swept some well-known Schubert's notes and turned them upside down. That's what remains.
Norberto Oldrini Self-taught composer, he also trained with Detlev Glanert. His music has been performed in Italy, USA, UK, China, Hungary, Germany, Yugoslavia, Portugal, Romania, Libya, Argentina, meeting dance, poetry, improvisation, cartoons, theater. RNCM Orchestra, Roland Böer, Algoritmo Ensemble, Minguet Quartett, Guido Arbonelli, are the most important performers of his works.