Esprit Orchestra: Heat Efficiency

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For their March 26 program, Heat Efficiency, Esprit Orchestra offers an international bill of composers, from Canadians Nicholas Ma and Claude Vivier to the Swiss Dieter Ammann and Uzbekistani Aziza Sadikova, whose work will be heard in Toronto for the first time.

Nicholas Ma

The concert opens with Nicholas Ma’s Memory of a Breath, his second commission with Esprit after last season’s Hijinks, which marked the composer’s first time working with a professional orchestra. According to Ma, Conductor and Artistic Director Alex Pauk encouraged him to “push [himself]further, trying out things that [he]hadn’t done before” in an effort “to provide a space for a composer to try new risks and improve.”

In his new work, Ma—who is currently president of the McGill Association of Student Composers—decided to use electronics in what he calls “a complete 180 from my previous piece in style, mood, and orchestration approach.” Memory of a Breath is a reflection on Ma’s grandmother’s passing and deterioration through dementia. He recalls, “the combination of looking through fleeting memories by her bedside while haunted by the sound of laboured breathing stuck with me. Memory of a Breath refers not only to the two ideas of a fading memory and associations with breathing, but also, more personally, my memory of hearing a dying person’s breath—something that I will never forget.”

Ma says to listen for a blend of electronic breathing and static fragments that invoke nostalgia and memory, and the push and pull between them as they build into a moment of clarity before fading into a sense of calm.

Claude Vivier’s Orion is inspired by the eponymous constellation and was originally premiered in 1980 by Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. The Montreal-born Vivier was interested in exploring harmonic frequencies, serialism and traditional Québécois folk songs, all of which he combined in his compositional style. As Vivier states in the published manuscript, “I have the impression that I’m sitting still on an airplane; I remain in the same place and yet I go from Cairo to Kuala Lumpur. Go and find out for yourself!”

Aziza Sadikova

The concert’s titular Heat Efficiency will introduce Aziza Sadikova to Canadian audiences. She encourages the listener to “let yourself be absorbed in my sonorous world” of music, emotion and drama. The work was originally commissioned with Düsseldorfer Symphoniker. As part of a series of “Green Monday” talks, experts spoke with the audience about various sustainability measures related to the 11 commissioned works. Heat Efficiency was accompanied by a talk asking, “Can we reduce our energy consumption for heating?” As described by Sadikova, it depicts the mechanical noises of heat and pipes, and also the waves of the heat, in a more “picturesque moment.”

Dieter Ammann’s No templates explores “unadulterated, but not unreflective” tonality, as well as “the idiomatic expression of the viola.” Ammann is known for the way he plays with texture; he wanted to challenge himself by featuring the solo viola’s lower registers, a part of the instrument rarely heard. He then used the relationship between viola and orchestra in various ways, treating the two as interlocking pieces, “a complete submersion of the solo instrument,” and a vocal-like line for the viola in an allusion to a Schubert song.

Dieter Ammann

Amann tells audiences: “My music is rich in drama and often highly active, sensual, yet very precise in its design: it takes you on a journey.” No templates is a sad, but hopeful piece. The concerto will feature internationally acclaimed German violist Nils Mönkemeyer, who premiered the work earlier this year. Ammann described the process of working with Mönkemeyer as “an inspiring artistic ping-pong game” and that the concert “wouldn’t have come to fruition” without Nils’ years of insistence.

The concert will conclude with another Sadikova work: Angelo di fuoco. Sadikova was inspired “by the unrest in the world,” and hopes “that the Angel will help us.” Her talent for sonic imagery continues, weaving together a traditional chorale by Russian composer Pavel Chesnokov, and poetry by Russian poet Nikolai Gumilyev: “The wings flutter in the sky like a banner/The eagle’s cluck, the frantic flight/Half the torso is flame/Half the torso is ice…”