Currier: review of Traces premiere in Berlin
(February 2010)
Sebastian Currier: review of Traces premiere in BerlinSebastian Currier’s new harp concerto, Traces, was premiered on 18 December by the Berliner Philharmoniker and soloist Marie-Pierre Langlamet conducted by Donald Runnicles, who also co-commissioned the score for his Grand Teton Music Festival.
Traces is the latest in a series of harp works written for Langlamet, following Night Time for solo harp, Crossfade for two harps and Broken Minuets for harp and string orchestra. Sensitive to balance issues, Currier employs a reduced orchestra with delicate and dappled coloration.
The middle three of the five movements point in an elusive way to a traditional concerto format where, as the composer describes it, “ruined fragments of past structures make ephemeral appearances.” The material is foreshadowed in the opening movement, and traces linger and resonate in the finale. Der Neue Merker perceived the “impression of a pastorale, a search for clues in a peaceful rural landscape.” The Berliner Zeitung described the work as “a beguiling concerto for harp and small orchestra, which devotes itself in five movements to sketchy, fragmentary mood painting... charming enigmatic sound expanses and pensive melody.”
Last month brought the first performance of Next Atlantis, Currier’s new 12-minute work for string orchestra and pre-recorded sounds. The American Composers Orchestra presented the premiere at Carnegie Hall together with a video component by Pawel Wojtasik. The work was prompted by reflections on the water that is both the life-blood and threatening nemesis of the city of New Orleans. Currier writes that “Next Atlantis is not about the ravages of Katrina per se, but about the more far reaching interaction between human culture and the natural world… It is a new Atlantis, not of the mythic past, but one of the too possible future.”
Forthcoming Currier premieres include bodymusic for 15 players and electronics, commissioned by the Miller Theater at Columbia University. Other works in the Composer Portrait devoted to Currier on 5 March include Night Time and Piano Concerto. Time Machines, Currier’s new violin concerto for Anne-Sophie Mutter, is scheduled for premiere in New York in the 2010/11 season.
> Further information on Work: Traces
Photo: Jeffrey Herman
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