Here’s our news, highlighting some of the interesting work being performed around the world!
Julia Wolfe (© Peter Serling, 2009)
On its September 20th and 21st concert, the Houston Symphony included the world premiere of Julia Wolfe’s Liberty Bell, a Houston Symphony co-commission, on its program. The concert also featured Florent Schmitt’s Psalm 47 (1904) and Igor Stravinsky’s Suite from the Firebird (1945 edition). Wolfe is one of the most frequently performed orchestral composers, with a Pulitzer Prize (Anthracite Fields, 2015) and a MacArthur Fellowship (2016) to her name. Liberty Bell commemorates the 250th anniversary of the United States. Both obtaining and maintaining liberty are not quiet, tidy, or buttoned-up processes but loud, messy, and vibrant, and Wolfe has written her piece to reflect that. The original Liberty Bell was cast with the inscription ” Proclaim LIBERTY Throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants Thereof,” and Wolfe has taken it as inspiration. Metal chimes, pitched bell plates, and large metal sheets variously evoke the Bell and the Liberty it represents, accompanied by orchestra.
On September 30 the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (London) will perform Dora Pejačević’s Phantasie Concertante on a concert of program music at Cadogan Hall. Emilia Hoving will conduct, and Pejačević’s work will feature Alexandra Dariescu as piano soloist. The Phantasie Concertante will be accompanied by Sibelius’s En saga, Ravel’s Mother Goose: Suite, and Stravinsky’s suite from The Firebird (1919). Called “a forgotten genius from the age of Mahler and Ravel,” Dora Pejačević was a Croatian composer, pianist, and violinist credited with writing the first modern Croatian symphony (her Symphony in F-Sharp Minor). The Phantasie concertante in D minor for piano and orchestra (1919) is an early post-war work—a time that saw a notable shift in her style from Romantic to more modernist and expressionist— that she dedicated to Hungarian pianist Alice Ripper.
Gemma New, conductor Photo Credit: Benjamin Ealovega
On October 1st the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra will perform Grażyna Bacewicz‘s Overture for orchestra to open its concert of music from Eastern Europe. Other items will include Sibelius’s Violin Concerto and Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony. Conductor Gemma New will direct the orchestra, and will conduct a pre-concert talk with violin soloist Jane Wright in the Jennifer Blackwell Performance Space. New is currently the conductor of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra—a post she has held since 2022, and its first woman. Indeed, she has been the first woman in a number of conducting and guest conducting positions as well as season opening concerts, including the Saint Louis Symphony and the Dallas Symphony. In 2024 she was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to music direction.
Grażyna Bacewicz hailed from Poland but maintained a strong connection to her parents’ Lithuanian heritage. Her father insisted that all of his children study violin, piano, and the foundations of music theory from a young age, so she was very well-positioned for a life in music. She performed and composed music throughout the Second World War and into the postwar Soviet era, in spite of censorship and changing state standards around what was considered music supportive of the regime. She began composing full time after a car accident in 1954 after a car accident fractured her pelvis and a few of her ribs, leaving her unable to endure the physical demands of performance.
Outi Tarkiainen, composer Credit: Sigel Eschkol
On October 1st, Outi Tarkiainen’s Polar Pearls, Concerto for Chamber Orchestra will receive its Japanese premiere from the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. It will appear alongside Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony. Tarkiainen is a graduate of the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. She is a composer “whose work bears witness to the world around it and whose music engages audiences while advancing the art form without compromise.” She regularly takes inspiration from Finnish Lapland, the home of the Sámi indigenous peoples, and both the landscapes and Sámi poetry regularly figure into her work. Her recent commissions read like a who’s-who of orchestras in Europe and North America, including: Berlin Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, Boston Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, National Arts Center Orchestra, Netherlands Philharmonic, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Finnish Radio Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Her work is also receiving regular performances from other orchestras such as the Minnesota Symphony, St Louis Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Houston Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic, Hagen Philharmonic and Vienna Tönkunstler.
Below is a recording of Tarkiainen’s Songs of the Ice (2019), performed by the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra in 2022, directed by Kenneth Keisler.
Sept 27/Oct 2/Oct 3 – Conductor Valentina Peleggi will make her Australasian debut this week, conducting a program of Italian music with two orchestras in three locations. She will lead the Tasmanian Symphony on Saturday September 27th, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in Wellington on Thursday October 2nd, and New Zealand again in Auckland on Friday October 3rd. Her chosen centerpiece is Rossini’s Stabat Mater, which she will pair with operatic interludes by Puccini and Verdi on the 27th and the 2nd. One the 3rd she will change them out to perform the premiere of Kiwi composer Victoria Kelly‘s own Stabat Mater. Peleggi is currently the Music Director of the Richmond Symphony (Virginia, USA), as post that she began in the 2020/21 season and has recently renewed through 2028. Kelly’s Stabat Mater engaged with a long tradition of pieces by the same name that draw on the same text—a 13th century Latin hymn describing the suffering of Mary at the crucifixion of Christ—but in a contemporary way. Kelly’s work is her response to the original hymn, questioning how the subject of the poem would react to the regimes and individuals who have appropriated the teachings of her son and imagining an alternate ending for him. (The composer’s full notes can be read here.)
The Library of Congress’s (LoC) Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation has awarded eight commissions for original works to composers paired with the performing organizations that will premiere each respective piece. Three women composers have been honored in this cohort: Lisa Bielawa, paired with the Louisville Symphony; Angelique Poteat, paired with the Northwest Sinfonietta; and Bora Yoon, paired with the Harlem Chamber Players. We look forward to reporting on these piece as their premieres arrive!
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