Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo: Fear of Tango

December 7, 2007

Amy Williams and Helena Bugallo

 Mauricio Kagel (Buenos Aires, 1931) studied music, literary history, and philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires. In the 1950s he was a member of the group Nueva Música and worked as accompanist at the Teatro Colón. Based in Cologne since 1957, he is recognized as one of the most distinctive composers of our time, above all for his contribution to music theatre. His vast creative output encompasses stage, orchestral and chamber music in an extremely wide range of instrumental settings, and also film scores, radio plays, and essays. Throughout this broad spectrum, the music reveals a breach with any and all forms of academicism as well as close ties to tradition, especially to the German tradition. Imagination, originality and humor are the hallmarks of this unique artist's style.

Capriccio on Two Pianos was commissioned by the 2005 International Performer's Competition of the radio in Munich. The thematic and at once fragmentary nature of the music and its allusion to pianistic repertoire of the past (taken out of context) are characteristic traits of Kagel's recent work. The unusual placement of the instruments brings theatrical aspects of performance to the foreground.

Mariano Etkin (Buenos Aires, 1943) studied at the Instituto Di Tella in Buenos Aires with Earle Brown, Gerardo Gandini, Alberto Ginastera, Maurice Le Roux, and Iannis Xenakis; at the Utrecht State University with Gottfried Koenig; and at the Juilliard School of Music with Luciano Berio. He has received commissions from Radio Bremen, Radio Deutschlandfunk, Ensemble Aventure and Freiburger Schlagzeug Ensemble (Germany), Composers/Performers Group of New York, Rümlingen Festival (Switzerland), and the Municipality of Buenos Aires. He has taught at various universities in Argentina, at McGill University (Montréal, Canada), and at Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada). Currently he is Professor of Composition and Musical Analysis and Director of a Research Project on Analysis of New Music at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina.

Aquello utilizes the two pianos as if they were a single instrument with expanded possibilities. It is organized in relatively autonomous sections characterized by one or more continuous levels, which are sometimes disturbed by the momentary instability of one of its aspects or by the appearance of some sporadic element. The title (meaning "That") refers in part to these disturbances. M.E.

María Cecilia Villanueva (La Plata, 1964) studied Composition at the National University of La Plata with Mariano Etkin. She is the winner of numerous prizes, including the "WDR Forum jünger Komponisten" (Cologne), Prize of the International Competition "Elizabeth Schneider" (Freiburg), and Premio Municipal from the City of Buenos Aires. She has received commissions from the Freiburger Schlagzeug Ensemble, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Musik-Biennale Berlin, Hannover New Music Society, Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik, Musica viva Munich (Germany), and Rümlingen Festival (Switzerland). Since 1994, she is Researcher and Associate Professor of Composition at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Since 2002, she is also Co-Director of the Research Group in Musical Analysis at the same university.

The title Cuatro esquinas (Four Corners) refers to the idea of crossing and it has to do with different aspects of the piece as well as with some source materials. There are in fact connections with literature, music, and architecture as a background reference with different degrees of presence. The title also comes out of a crossed reference: there is a famous poem by Jorge Luis Borges, Fundación mítica de Buenos Aires (Mythical Foundation of Buenos Aires), in which he named four streets of the Palermo area in Buenos Aires (incidentally the quarter where I live) and also there is a famous street intersection in the city of Palermo, Sicily, named Quattro Canti (four corners, but also four songs). Each of the four corners at Quattro Canti is ornamented with a sculpture and a fountain dating from 1600, representing, among other things, the four seasons. The Italian architect who designed the corners was named Lasso, curiously, the same name of the composer from whom there are some references in the piece. Linking with the four seasons, I selected as material to work with some excerpts of Vivaldi's Sonnets -which served as programmatic background text for his Four Seasons. The musical references in the piece extend also to Wagner's Parsifal (which he finished in Palermo), to my own history with the use of the piano, and to some short tango gestures. Cuatro esquinas was a commission from the WDR Köln, for the Festival Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik 2006 and it is dedicated to the Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo. M.C.V

Santiago Santero (Buenos Aires, 1962) studied piano at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música in Buenos Aires, conducting at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, and composition with Guillermo Graetzer and Mariano Etkin. He has founded and directed various groups devoted to the interpretation of contemporary music in Buenos Aires, such as the Grupo Estudio Contemporáneo, the Halloween ensemble, and the CEAMC ensemble. His production as a composer encompasses a number of chamber and scenic pieces, which have been performed by artists such as Robyn Schulkovky, Pedro Carneiro, Piano Circus, soloists from the Psappha ensemble, and Antidogma Música. He presently teaches at the Instituto Universitario Nacional del Arte in Buenos Aires and at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata.

Bagatella Nr. 1, for two pianos, was transcribed from a piece originally written for marimba and piano. The main compositional technique applied on that piece is canon. Here, the canon between both instruments is fragmented and disassembled: the same material appears over and over again as if it was a kaleidoscope. The last section presents some new, non-canonic material. It closes the piece in an obsessive and incisive way while creating a certain asymmetry on the overall form. S.S.

Erik Oña (Córdoba, 1961) studied composition and conducting at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina, and holds a Ph.D. in composition from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He has received commissions from the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, De Ijsbreker, the Nieuw Ensemble, the Opera of Stuttgart, the Hannoveraner Tage für Neue Musik, the Europäischer Musikmonat, Ensemble Intercontemporain-IRCAM, and ZKM (Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe), among others. As a conductor, he has worked at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, and collaborated with numerous groups, including the New York New Music Ensemble, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, Champ d'Action, Ensemble Resonanz, and Basel Sinfonietta. Since 1996 he conducts the Thürmchen Ensemble in Cologne. He has recorded for Mode Records, WERGO, and Deutschland Funk. He has taught at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Kunitachi College of Music (Tokyo), the State University of New York at Buffalo, and the University of Birmingham, UK. Presently, he teaches Composition and is Director of the Electronic Music Studio at the Basel Musik-Akademie in Switzerland.

Jodeln, for piano harmonics, is part of a trilogy completed by Andere Stimmen, for prepared piano, six hands, and Lokaler Widerstand for piano duet and string-orchestra. The three works are conceptually related, but their sound is markedly different. Jodeln concentrates on gradations of timbre and is an exploration of the world of overtones with their subtle nuances of color, pitch, and reverberation. Formally, it evolves as a cyclical spiral branching off at particular point in order to highlight a detail and return more or less inconspicuously to the main cycle. E.O.

Antonio Zimmerman (Buenos Aires, 1971) graduated Cum Laude in Composition at the Universidad Católica Argentina, where he studied with Roberto Caamaño, Marta Lambertini, Gerardo Gandini, and Pablo Cetta. He took courses in Argentina, France and Austria with Franco Donatoni, Brian Ferneyhough, and Toshio Hosokawa. He has received scholarships from Fondation Royaumont, Avantgarde Schwaz, and Fondo Nacional de las Artes. From 1997 until 2002 Zimmerman was a member of the contemporary music group Séptima Práctica, as a composer, producer, and interpreter. He has won, among other prizes, the Cantus Ensemble Composition Competition 2002 (Croatia), TriMArg2002 (Tribune of Argentine Music), Juan Carlos Paz 2003, 2nd Prize DSCH 2005 (Paris/Moscow) and José María Castro 2005 (SADAIC). Besides writing music for dance, theatre, and short films, Zimmerman's music has been premiered by interpreters like Séptima Práctica, Ictus Ensemble, HET Trio, Irvine Arditti, and Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble. In 2007 his opera Clone - based on a story by Julio Cortázar - was premiered at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.

Although it is built in five parts, Piezas y promenades is a ternary work; the three main pieces alternate with two short ones, and each piece is a variation of such structure. The first piece - related to sonata form - starts by exploring timbral resources that lead to the main section: a development of intervals in different tempi. Both promenades act as dramatic links. The central piece is made up of repeated phrases in changing tempi with subtle resonances. The last piece has three similar sections: one strong attack followed by two approximating sounds, a broken continuum aiming towards unison. Piezas y promenades is a commission from Americas Society with funds from The New York State Music Fund, and was written for the Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo. A.Z.

Pablo Ortiz (Buenos Aires, 1956) was first trained in his native city, where he received a degree from the Universidad Católica Argentina. At 27, he moved to New York to study at Columbia University. He taught composition and was co-director of the Electronic Music Studio at the University of Pittsburgh from 1990 to 1994. At present, he is Professor of Composition at the University of California, Davis. Among those who have performed his compositions are the Orquesta Filarmónica de Buenos Aires, the Arditti String Quartet, the Ensemble Contrechamps of Geneva, Music Mobile, Continuum, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and the Theatre of Voices. He has received commissions and fellowships from the Fromm Foundation, Guggenheim, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Centro Experimental Teatro Colón, the Koussevitzky Foundation, Fideicomiso para la cultura Mexico-US, and the Gerbode Foundation. Ortiz's works include chamber and solo music, vocal, orchestral, and electronic compositions, and music for plays and films.

Fear of Tango takes its title from the tango gestures that are buried in the music, periodically surfacing for an instant, only to be submerged in contrasting elements. It is a careful hide-and-seek game with my own fascination for the tango. In the process of writing this piece, I became bold enough to surmount my fears. I subsequently wrote a whole series of works based on the idea of tango and memory. P.O.

The Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo has been presenting innovative programs of contemporary music throughout North America and Europe since 1995. Helena Bugallo and Amy Williams perform cutting-edge new works and masterpieces of the twentieth century for piano four-hands and two pianos, including works by Cage, Debussy, Feldman, Kagel, Kurtág, Ligeti, Nancarrow, Sciarrino, Stockhausen, Stravinsky, and Wolpe. They have premiered dozens of works, many of which were written especially for the Duo, and they have worked directly with such renowned composers as Lukas Foss, Steve Reich, Jukka Tiensuu, Peter Oetvoes, Kevin Volans, and Bernard Rands. They also collaborate with composers who explore new approaches to the piano through multimedia applications, electronics, and extended techniques. They frequently perform with additional players in works for multiple keyboards, chamber works for duo piano and instruments, and concertos. The Duo has been featured at the NUMUS Festival (Aarhus), UNAM (Mexico City), Miller Theatre, Merkin Concert Hall, and Symphony Space (New York City), CAL Performances (Berkeley), Sound Field Festival (Chicago), Spring Festival of New Music (York, UK), Cutting Edge (London), Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik (Witten), Subtropics Festival (Miami) and Ojai Festival, to name a few. As part of their mission to expand the repertoire for piano duet, they have undertaken an extensive transcription project of the Studies for Player Piano by Conlon Nancarrow. This has resulted in a critically acclaimed recording of Nancarrow’s music for piano duet and solo piano, released by Wergo in 2004. Their new CD Stravinsky in Black and White (Wergo, 2007) includes original arrangements for piano duet and two pianos by the composer, two of which are world premiere recordings. They have also recorded the music of Jorge Liderman (Albany Records, 2005) and Erik Oña (Wergo, 2007). Avid proponents of contemporary music, they frequently present master classes and lecture-demonstrations at colleges and universities in the United States and Europe.

 

For more information visit: www.bugallowilliams.com.

 

 

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