Sigma Alpha Iota

Sai-natiOnal.ORg SummER 2014 PAN PIPES 17 By SuSan WideR eaRly MaRCh i 'm well into my morning violin practice session when I see the FedEx lady back into our driveway. She's one of only two delivery drivers who ever tries this. Most are put off by the driveway's curve and its easy-to-hit, wooden fence. Add a water trough and a hitching post and this could be the Ponderosa Ranch from Bonanza. I suspect that FedEx is delivering something for my husband from Amazon, a book, a CD, a book, a CD, or perhaps a book. Instead, it's my El Paso Symphony Orchestra music for an upcoming concert. a day lateR I scan my violin parts for trouble spots. Debussy's Aernoon of a Faun. Fine. I've played it many times. A harp concerto by Henriette Renié. Good. Here's a composer that's new to me. Ravel's La Valse. I haven't played this before so I'll need to look at some spots. Also Bolero. is will require loin-girding. I can't possibly play it without seeing ice dancers. And there's one final piece that seems familiar in some way I can't define. It's a work called Open Ground by Victoria Borisova-Ollas. Why do I know her name? I check the computer list of my CDs and there's Victoria on a BBC Music Magazine Masterprize Competition CD. I hunt down the CD, hoping we might be playing her actual Masterprize composition. Did she win that contest? I can't remember. No, Victoria's Masterprize Competition entry was called Wings of the Wind. It won Second Prize. Our piece is something different. I'd better get started on this one. e rhythm at the beginning looks tricky. Not a sight-reading picnic. MayBe a Week lateR I prowl on Victoria's web site and discover an interesting lady. She was born in Russia but now lives in Sweden. Her degrees are from the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Russia and Malmo College of Music in Sweden, and she has won prizes in Sweden and in the UK. ere's a range of compositions listed. I want to hear Image-Reflection for Two Violins and Orchestra, or maybe her piece for twelve saxophones. Or the one for flute, saxophone, guitar, percussion and tape. I have to settle for Wings of the Wind and Open Ground because I actually have recordings of those. Her sources of inspiration are as interesting as her instrumentation. Chagall, Rilke, Psalm 104, Kazimir Malevich - a Russian artist I'm not familiar with. And in the case of Open Ground, Salman Rushdie's novel e Ground Beneath Her Feet. end of MaRCh We received one of those thinly veiled practice appeals from the orchestra office. Our performance will be the US première of Open Ground, and Victoria is travelling from Sweden for the occasion. is means I might have to memorize that weird opening rhythmic passage. My part is marked Violin III and is mostly divisi, which means there are lots of divided parts within the violin sections. is gives me more insight into Victoria's music creation. She likes to layer her strings. e opening meter alternates between 4/4 and 3/4, but not in a way that ever looks parallel or predictable. I try to find a rhythmic pattern in the col legno section — where we play using only the wood of the bow — but there isn't one. Unpredictable. I like that; Victoria has my attention. eaRly apRil I feel comfortable with the beginning of Open Ground now, and I can play it nearly up to tempo. But the scattered clusters of slurred 16 th notes on page four are killer. I haven't been able to hear them clearly on the recording because they dovetail with similar clumps flying around in all the string sections. What is Victoria depicting here? ere's a blurb about the piece on her web site and also in the orchestra's program book. It's to do with the earthquake in Mexico from Rushdie's novel. El Paso, TX, is a gateway to Old Mexico so the logistics are fortunate. Victoria says this about the piece, "Open Ground is an expression referring to the ground beneath our feet, the reality in which we exist at the moment, how real and stable it actually is." day of fiRSt ReheaRSal I listen to both Wings and Ground during hour two of my five-hour drive to El Paso. I can't resist jotting down what I notice. I hear a lot of underlying tremolo — where the string players move the bow as fast as possible on one note — in both pieces. Is Victoria depicting the wind here or ground tremors? I notice that she directs a lot of her phrases upwards. Is she asking questions? Or perhaps hinting at questions that are waiting to be asked? ere are huge meaty brass sections in both pieces. Maybe that's for the power of Nature? And each piece also has championship percussion. Nature's complexity or assertiveness, perhaps? fiRSt ReheaRSal Nothing like a double rehearsal on top of my long drive to get here. We start with Valse and Faun, and then move on to Victoria's piece. at col legno rhythm at the beginning is causing problems right and le. Our conductor, Sarah Ioannides, is so patient. And inspired, to even program Open Ground in the first place in this town. I still hear grumblings from friends here about the time she introduced her audience to Steve Reich. We sound scrappy. I hope Victoria isn't due to arrive until later in the week. the next day She's already here. Maybe each player should arrange to sign up for a time slot to consult Sarah's score. In a piece with so many layers, you really want to understand how your snippets fit in. Is anybody else playing anything like what I have in bar 283? About this time, my stand partner notices that under that rhythmic business at the beginning, she's one of only three people with an A#. Hey, a solo; go for it. Sarah introduces Victoria to us, and we beaver away. en we try a play-through with confusing results. I'm embarrassed. Shouldn't we be nailing this with the composer in the concert hall? Sarah asks Victoria for comments, and she is extraordinarily gracious. She thanks us. She offers a few mild criticisms. But we all know that the piece is not at all where it needs to be. During the rehearsal break I decide to pull out my Masterprize CD and ask Victoria to autograph it. ere's no good way to describe her face when she sees it. "But how you have this? Not possible. You cannot buy. You cannot get. How you have?" e perfect ice breaker; I sense us bonding already. She signs my CD, and we talk for a few minutes about similarities between Wings and Ground. I'm pretty sure this will have anecdote potential back in Sweden. and the next day Open Ground is mildly better. But on another front, both the harp soloist for the Renié and our Premiere: A Violinist's Notebook puttIng It together PREMIERE continued on page 18

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