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Old Friends, New Pieces By JOEL SACHS
Meeting superb composers with delightful personalities has led to some excellent friendships. The fruits of two such encounters can be heard on the New Juilliard Ensemble's April 8 concert at Alice Tully Hall.
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| The late composer Valentin Bibik (Photo by Virko Baley) |
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I met Valentin Bibik in his home city, Kharkiv, during a 1990 tour of Ukraine by my new-music ensemble, Continuum. Valentin, the secretary of the local Composers Union, was our consummately friendly host, despite the matching primitiveness of his English and my Russian. Determined to open local ears, he organized a Continuum workshop, which—to our astonishment—was packed with some 150 people. He brought me back two years later to conduct a program with the Kharkiv Philharmonic, as conditions in the once prosperous industrial city plummeted. His generosity at a time of great hardship could have left me with uncomfortable obligations, but in fact, I was eager to bring home his beautiful compositions. My respect for his creativity increased as I saw him composing at one of the most out-of-tune pianos imaginable. When I asked how such stunningly beautiful music could be conceived on such a hideous instrument, he sweetly said that he used his imagination, since he could no longer afford a piano tuner.A few years later the Bibiks moved to St. Petersburg, where he had a lectureship. Then, because his wife is Jewish, they could emigrate to Israel. There he gradually established himself as a lecturer and teacher, and his creative juices flowed. He sent me piece after piece, many of them written in the hope that I would conduct them with the New Juilliard Ensemble or perform them with Continuum, which I gladly did, and with huge success. The future was looking bright when he suddenly developed a brain tumor, which killed him in 2003 at age 62.One could take comfort in the idea that Bibik would live on in his music—but because he lacked a real publisher, even that idea was uncertain, as I soon saw. For this season, I programmed an unperformed Clarinet Concerto that he had sent me in 2000, placidly assuming that he had prepared the orchestral parts with his characteristic thoroughness. In fact, only the clarinet soloist's part existed, as I learned in January when I requested a set from his family, whose preoccupation with survival had prevented them from attending to the piece. Copying it in New York would be prohibitively expensive, and it seemed risky to count on it getting done quickly in Israel. A cancellation seemed imminent.
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| Tony Prabowo |
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Enter the rescue squad, in the form of the Ukrainian-American composer Virko Baley, a close friend of the Bibiks. Virko has his own publishing company, and quickly reached a publication agreement with the Bibiks. He then arranged for Tim Bonenfant, his student at the University of Nevada, to copy it. A miracle worker, Tim completed the job in less than a month, and in early March we were correcting the proofs. Parts will be generated well in time for the first rehearsal, and the concerto will be premiered by Daniel Goldman, a first-year undergraduate clarinetist.
The Bibik crisis was being solved while another drama was unfolding. Last year, Tony Prabowo, a remarkable Indonesian composer whom I have known for 10 years, spontaneously offered to write another piece—his third—for the New Juilliard Ensemble. I was delighted; his 1996 Autumnal Steps and his 2002 chamber opera, The King's Witch, were really memorable. (Mario Davidovsky described Autumnal Steps as "Berg with a gamelan.") Alas, The King's Witch had been programmed and cancelled twice before it finally was completed. I fortified myself by recalling the circumstances: first, as the Suharto dictatorship collapsed, the librettist, a renowned journalist named Goenawan Mohamad, suddenly became a central political figure with very little free time for the opera. Then Tony was beaten up by soldiers as he sat in front of the Jakarta Arts Center. In short, the delays were unavoidable. This time, Tony guaranteed that I would have the piece on time.
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New Juilliard Ensemble
Alice Tully Hall
Friday, April 8, 8 p.m.
Free tickets available in the Juilliard Box Office.
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Neither of us reckoned with the disruption of the tsunami. I finally got a partial score in late January, and learned that Tony (unknown to me) had decided to make it a Piano Concerto. I had to locate a pianist willing to learn an incomplete piece! Fortunately, three N.J.E. pianists were excited by the idea. Tony then announced that he would shortly send a complete score with Juilliard alumna Stephanie Griffin, who was returning from performing in Jakarta. When she arrived, she had the package—but had been given the wrong one! After another week, the real score arrived. Lacking time for the usual audition process, I selected Nicholas Ong as soloist, because it will be his final year as a resident student and his last chance to appear with the New Juilliard Ensemble. (My apologies to the other two.) The piece, Psalms, is dedicated to the victims of the Indonesian tragedy, and looks well worth the tension of the cliffhanger.The concert also includes world premieres of pieces by German composer Walter Zimmermann and by Teddy Niedermaier (the second of two Juilliard composition students chosen to write this year), along with the N.Y. premiere of Wanderlied, a short cello concerto by French-American Betsy Jolas (with Elinor Frey as soloist).Joel Sachs, director of the New Juilliard Ensemble and the annual Focus! festival, has been a faculty member since 1970.
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