Chin's snagS & Snarls unveiled at the Ojai Festival
(August 2004)
In June the closing concert of the Ojai Festival offered an enticing glimpse of Unsuk Chin’s forthcoming opera for Los Angeles Opera, with the premiere of snagS and Snarls for mezzo soprano and orchestra.
These ‘Scenes from Alice in Wonderland’ were commissioned by and given their first performance by the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra conducted by Kent Nagano, with Margaret Thompson as soloist. snagS & Snarls reveals an ideal match between the wordplay in Lewis Carroll’s text and the musical games in Chin’s music, whether the pointillist teardropping syllables of Who in the world am I, or the violent assault and cries of Speak roughly to your little Boy.
"Ms Chin gives us delicate whimsy, modal chanting, touches of metrical ambiguity, a little Sprechstimme, and fastidious raucousness…"
New York Times
"The Victorian poetry of the first song, Alice-Acrostic, was underscored by allusions to early music. The third song The Tale-Tail of the Mouse, in which Carroll’s poetry snakes down the page, was the most interesting, as if textural invention gave Chin permission to let voice and orchestra do some inventive slipping and sliding of their own." Los Angeles Times
Four of the five songs in snagS & Snarls will appear in Chin’s opera Alice in Wonderland, scheduled for premiere in Los Angeles in 2006 under the baton of Nagano, with Kristen Chenoweth in the title role. The composer is co-writing the libretto, which is drawn from Lewis Carroll’s classic tale, with the award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang, author of M. Butterfly and librettist of Philip Glass’s The Voyage and The Sound of a Voice. The staging will be by William Friedkin, director of the films The French Connection and The Exorcist, who has recently embraced the world of opera, directing Wozzeck at the Maggio Musicale in Florence and Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, Gianni Schicchi and Ariadne auf Naxos for LA Opera.
snagS & Snarls (2003-04)
for mezzo soprano solo and orchestra
2.2.2.2—0.0.0.0—harp—pft—perc(3)—strings(10,8,6,6,4)
Duration: 13 minutes
Violin Concerto travels
Following Chin’s receipt of the 2004 Grawemeyer Award for her Violin Concerto, the work has enjoyed increased international prominence, including its US premiere last month with Nagano conducting the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra and Viviane Hagner as soloist.
Other performances this season include the World New Music Days in Bern (11/12 November) with soloist Alexis Vincent, the Austrian premiere in St Pölten with Ernst Kovacic and the RSO Wien conducted by HK Gruber (29 January), Stockholm New Music Festival with Hae Sun Kang and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic conducted by Baldur Bronniman (24 February), and three performances by the Berlin Philharmonic and Christian Tetzlaff under the baton of Simon Rattle (26-28 April).
> Further information on Work: snagS&Snarls
Photo: Unsuk Chin takes a bow at the Ojai Festival premiere of snagS & Snarls, with soprano Margaret Thompson and conductor Kent Nagano (Image: Robert Millard)
> News Search
Mailing List
Sign up for news updates and offers via email
SIGN UPFeatured Publication
Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition
Mussorgsky's famous work in Ravel's technicolour orchestration is included in the Masterworks Library of full scores, ideal for conductors, students and music lovers.
READ MORENew Photo Prints Shop
