26/08/2022
In November 2021, violinist Baiba Skride joined longtime collaborator Harriet Krjigh (cello), and my oldest friend - violist Ivan Vukčević - at the famous EMIL Berliner Studios in Berlin to record an Album of my Chamber Music.
The recording is produced by Lukas Kowalski.
https://www.navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6453/
This would turn out to be - after over 25 years of making records for other people - my ‘first Album’. I didn’t even produce it… in fact - I wasn’t even there… thanks to the plague - I was stuck in Australia, and I had to watch on through the miracle of technology these extraordinary musicians (under the excellent guidance of Lukas) bring my music to life.
The result is nothing short of spectacular.
As a composer - you can’t ask for better… only different. And that is quite an incredible place to be…
The Album includes works that stretch all the way back to 2003 up to the most recent work included from late 2020.
The String Trio “Trigon” (2003) - is the only work that features all three musicians and is a masterclass of chamber music making. These players engage in a musical dialogue of a sort that makes me feel entirely vindicated in having chosen to return to this form of music making…
The disc’s newest work - 2020’s Concerto for Two; written especially for Baiba and Harriet - is my letter to both musicians, they way I hear them as players and in some way - how I see them both as people… and sure enough this work is tackled expertly and exactly as I imagined it…
One of the absolute highlights for me however - and the work which initially captured Lukas’ imagination in the Studio - is the Rhapsody for viola.
Made up of material from my viola concerto; this piece - written especially for Ivan - is (to me) the perfect collaboration…
The piece, the performer and the friendship that goes back to when we were basically children; Ivan was always a champion of my music - even when I searching for meaning in the furthest-most opposite direction… and I’m not surprised that this piece - the longest, and potentially most challenging of all the music included - is something of a ‘dark horse’. And not unlike Ivan himself - who is one of the finest musicians in the world - and who no one sees coming.
This whole project (like many of the projects which surround this one) - is defined (to me at least) by lines of interconnection… some that stretch back to my childhood; and some in others in ways - even further.
The opening work - “Via Crucis” - which is the piece that ultimately culminated in this disc; began life when I walked into a tiny Church in the city centre of Lugano in Switzerland in 2018. I thought it would be nice to light a candle for my Grandmother who had recently passed, and was probably still unhappy I wasn’t a practising Catholic…
The Church was beautiful, decorated with all manner of renaissance era artwork - but what struck me, was a series of sculptures that were displayed around the walls depicting the Passion - entitled Via Crucis, by a local Swiss Artist by the name of Nag Arnoldi (see the image below).
These incredibly expressive works immediately got me imagining the sound of a violin echoing through the building - music that sounded like Bach; only different. Ideas began coming quickly, so I lit a candle, and rushed off to start writing.
When I finished the piece, I sent it to Ivan and asked if he could pass it onto some of his violinist colleagues in Lugano, and perhaps I could organise for one of them to play the work in the Church there. Instead, he decided to give it to Baiba Skride - who loved it!
Baiba premiered the piece in Pittsburgh about a year later.
The date of the concert was two days after my Grandmother’s birthday.
The Ties That Bind…
Navona Records and Australian composer Lee Bradshaw present THE TIES THAT BIND, a collection of chamber music for strings that reveal an explicit and emotionally-charged truth.
