Premiere of Skaņu Mežs’ commission: Dmitri Kourliandski’s „Dolce Stil Nuovo”

The second event of the concert series “Skaņu Mežs’ commissioned works for Latvia’s Centenary”, wherein the jubilee of Latvia is celebrated with new compositions from various genres of experimental and avant-garde music, will take place at 7PM on July 7 in Liepāja at the chamber hall of concert hall Lielais dzintars (http://lielaisdzintars.lv/en). Russian composer Dmitri Kourliandski (Дмитрий Курляндский) – recipient of the prestigious Gaudeamus International Composers Award and co-founder of the Structural Resistance (StRes) group of composers – will oversee the world premiere of his third string quartet „Dolce stil nuovo” as performed by ensemble ReDo – Konstantīns Paturskis (violin), Kristiāna Ozoliņa (violin), Dāvis Sliecāns (viola), Pēteris Ozoliņš (cello).

Concert is free of charge but due to limited number of seats, invitations should be acquired in advance at „Biļešu serviss” („Ticket service”) sales points and here. To get a free ticket, one must click on „presale with code” and enter this text – „lv100” – into the code field.

Dmitri Kourliandski, born 1976 in Moscow, graduated from the Moscow Conservatory and completed post-graduate course led by Leonid Bobylev. His compositions won prizes at the international composers competitions, including the Gaudeamus Prize 2003, Gianni Bergamo Classic Music Award 2010, Johann Joseph Fux opera composition competition 2011, Andrey Voznesensky foundation “Parabola” prize 2016, Franco Abbiati 2017 Prize of Italian music critic. In 2008 he was artist-in-residence of the Berliner Künstlerprogramm and in 2010 – composer-in-residence of the 2E2M ensemble in Paris. Since 2012 he is invited to give master-classes and lectures in Austria, Italy, The Netherlands, Ukraine, France, Israel, Spain, Russia.

His chamber opera Swerlians was staged by Boris Yukhananov in 2012 and 2015 in Moscow. In 2013 chamber opera Asteroid 62 was staged in Graz (directed by Barbara Beyer) and in Moscow (directed by Kapitalina Tsvetkova-Plotnikova). Opera Nosferatu, staged by Theodoros Terzopoulos, Jannis Kounellis and Teodor Currentzis in 2014 in Perm and in Moscow. Opera Octavia.Trepanation is to be premiered at Holland Festival 2017, staged by Boris Yukhananov. Performance installation Commedia delle arti, was commissioned and presented for the Venice Art Biennale Russian pavilion 2017.

Portrait CDs were published at the FANCYMUSIC and Col Legno labels.
Dmitri Kourliandski is the founder and artistic director of the International Young Composers Academy in Tchaikovsky city. Co-founder of the Structural Resistance group (StRes). Musical director of the Stanislavsky Electrotheatre.

Kourliandski describes the new piece in the following words: „I entitled the piece „Dolce stil nuovo”. However it has no connotations to this historic style – it has more to do with the concrete meaning of the words. „Dolce” – the piece has quite delicate material, mostly consisting of quiet and fragile sounds. The fragility is encoded as well into the way the musicians communicate in the piece – it is both communication with the score and within themselves. And now about «stil nouvo». It is my third string quartet. The first one I wrote in 2004, it was very characteristic for the style of my writing at that time – totally structured, made of only extended techniques, a kind of kinetic object. The second one was composed in 2014 – by that time I started to work with open forms, however again staying in the «noise» sound aesthetics. Since couple of years I turned more into building within the score a certain (more or less open) social communicative models, dealing with collective coordination, leadership, subordination and other social topics. Here the main questions were: (im)possibility of synchronization, being together – the material i propose has open rhythmic organization, I do ask, however, for synchronized gestures; taking decisions of solo (independent) gestures – musicians have a very reduced list of solo gestures they can perform when they feel the necessity; taking role of a leader – each musician once becomes a sort of conductor, leading the string trio. These questions become the main material of the piece, they stay behind the sound. The final form (which will last about 15-17 minutes) is built by a chain of blocks of such questions/materials.”
The composer will be present at the premiere.

The concert series “Skaņu Mežs’ commissioned works for Latvia’s Centenary” is comprised of three concerts of first performances of pieces from a selection of avantgarde genres (free improvisation, contemporary music, and electroaccoustic music). Iannis Xenakis’ epic electronic composition, ”Persepolis,” which was created for the 1971 Shiraz Arts Festival in Iran in honor of the 2500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire, is the inspiration for this way of marking the upcoming centennial. The innovativeness of ”Persepolis” still serves as a reminder of this event and country. Each of the three new works from this project will be performed in a different Latvian city – Jelgava, Liepāja and Daugavpils.

This project has received support from the program ”Latvia – 100” of the State Culture Capital Foundation and the municipality of Liepaja.

Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O7y8W6JLdk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHnCgRTM1mE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3VX6-4VTs4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeDDpW5mZVU

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