John Kameel Farah, pianist
Wednesday, October 20, 1999

Programme

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) - English Suite No. 6 in D minor, BWV 811
Prélude
Allemande
Courante
Sarabande
Double
Gavotte I
Gavotte II (da capo I)
Gigue

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) - from Twenty Four Preludes and Fugues, Opus 87 (1951)
Prelude and Fugue No. 23 in F major
Prelude and Fugue No. 15 in D-flat major

intermission

Charles Kœchlin (1867-1950) - from Les Heures Persanes, Opus 65 (posthumous)
IV. Matin frais, dans la huate vallée
V. En vue de la ville
IX. Aubade

Louis Andriessen (b.1939) - Trepidus (1983)

John Kameel Farah (b.1973) - Soul Departing Body (1997)

Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) - from Vingt Regards sur l’Énfant Jésus (1944)
XIII. Noël
II. Regard de l’étoile
XVI. Regard des prophètes, des bergers et des Mages

Johann Sebastian Bach, English Suite No. 6 in D minor, BWV 811
Bach composed the six English Suites in 1720s when he was Kapellmeister to the Duke of Sax-Weimar at Cöthen. The title of “English Suite” is a curious one, as the style of writing in these pieces is not characteristic of English keyboard of Bach’s era, and in some ways they sound more French than English. These pieces are considerably longer and more imposing than his earlier French Suites, and the first movement is usually a difficult and lengthy prelude or overture. The second movment is an Allemande which is rich and ornamented, and next is a Courante which sets a winding melody in the right hand above a gently flowing bass line. The Sarabande, which is a slow dance in triple meter, is characterised by a an accent on the second beat of the bar, rather than the first. The Sarabande is very bare and leaves a lot of choices to the performer to improvise and ornament the melody. Following is a Double, which is like a variation on the Sarabande in that it follows the exact same chord progression. After this we have two Gavottes, the second of which providing a beautiful colour contrast by changing to the key of D major. The final movement is a Gigue which is in the form of a fugue, and one outstanding feature of this gigue are the extremely long trills which accompany the fugal subject.

Dmitri Shostakovich, Twenty Four Preludes and Fugues, Opus 87
The inception of Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues occurred in 1950, when he was part of the jury at the Bach Competition in Leipzig. It was here that he heard the playing of pianist Tatyana Nikolayeva, to whom the jury awarded the first prize. Shostakovich was so impressed by her playing, it inspired him to write his own set of Preludes and Fugues, which are considered to be his greatest work for piano and is a monument to 20th century contrapuntal writing. He premiered the set himself in 1951, but due to his own nervousness didn’t perform them well, and the Moscow audience did not recieve the work well. But this reaction fuled Nikolayeva’s desire to have the set accepted as a masterpiece, and one year later she performed it to the praise of the critics and other composers. Although Shostakovich stated that the work should be performed as a compoete cycle, he himself usually only performed excerpts. Number 23 is tender and instrospective, and is firmly rooted in tonality. The 15th prelude in D-flat is an explosive waltz, while the fiery and turbulent fugue is possibly the most harmonically and rhythmically unstable of the whole set.

Charles Kœchlin, from Les Heures Persanes, Op. 65
In 1900, a French naval officer named Julien Viaud (who wrote under the name Pierre Loti) took a trip to the Persian Gulf, passing through Shiraz and Isfahan. Loti published a diary of his travels in 1904, entitled Vers Isfahan (Towards Isfahan), which, along with such books as Victor Mardrus’ translation of One Thousand and One Nights, inspired Kœchlin to write a set of sixteen pieces for piano in 1913 entitled Les Heures Persanes, most of which are slow in tempo. Kœchlin was moved by the imagery of the descriptions of Persia and it’s former greatness, and although he never visited the country himself, he had already been influenced by Islamic art and architecture from a stay in Algiers in 1889. Later he wrote that he had tried to “convey the feeling of supreme calm and hamonious resignation that one finds in Arab tombs”. Kœchlin himself was not an active pianist, and much of his piano writing reflects the very specific technique that he had aquired on the instrument. With hands that were extremely large and spanned much more than an octave, a lot his piano writing explores very large, thick, bitonal chords. Kœchlin’s vision for the future of music lay in the utilisation of intervals smaller than the semitone, although none of his own music contained the quartertones which he was so fascinated with in his explorations of Middle Eastern music. Massenet and Fauré were his primary composition teachers, and he later became a very influential teacher, Francis Poulenc being one of his best known pupils.

Louis Andriessen, Trepidus

Dutch composer Luois Andriessen was born in Utrecht in 1939, the son of composer Hendrik Andriessen, who would later teach his son composition. His compositional style is an offshoot of American minimalist composers such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich, although his music is less smooth and more filled with aggressive, relentless rhythms and at times extremely dissonant harmonies. Fast-tempo Jazz and big band music has also had a great influence on his musical approach. Though Andriessen himself is a pianist, most of his best known music is orchestral, and this piano piece is relatively short in comparison with the grand scale of his orchestral works such as De Staat (The Republic) and De Tijd (Time). Composed in 1983, the title Trepidus suggests trepidation, uneasiness, hastiness. The first two sections of Trepidus are in 5/8 meter, beginning with a section of chords of inequal duration which eventually is replaced by a fast paced section in which chords alter betweem . The meter then changes to 2/4, and after a triplet section, the piece moves into a relentless mode in which extremely thick and violent chords change with every sixteenth note. The piece is played fortissimo throughout, and only near the end is there a brief decrescendo before a final onslaught of chords which could tear mountains apart.

John Kameel Farah, Soul Departing Body

This piece was composed in 1997.
A quiet, repeating four-note motif serves as the basis for this piece, set to slowly changing harmonies which cast different shades of light and temperature upon the melody. Occaisonally the slow repitition of a chord suggests the low vibrations of a deep bell sounding almost inaudibly but whose vibrations can be felt through the air.


Olivier Messiaen, from Vingt Regards sur l’Énfant Jésus

The following are the composer’s own descriptions printed with the score:
XIII. Noël (Carillon - Les cloches de Noël disent avec nous les doux noms de J´sus, Marie, Joseph...) [Christmas. Christmas bells claim with us the sweet names of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. A Carillon (a set of tuned bells)]
II. Regard de l’étoile (Thème de l’Étoile et de la croix. Choc de la grace.... L’´toile luit naïvement, surmontée d’une croix...) [ Regard of the star. The shock of grace - the star shines naively, surmounted by a cross. Theme of the star and the cross.]
XVI. Regard des prophètes, des bergers et des Mages (Musique exotique - tam-tams et houtbois, concert énorme et nasillard...) [...of the prophets, the shepherds and the Magi. Gongs and oboes - a vast and reedy consort. An exotic music.]


John Kameel Farah was born in Toronto, Canada, 1973 to Palestinian parents. He began private studies at the Royal Conservatory of Music at an early age. In later years he studied piano performance with Valerie Tryon, Artist-in-Residence at MacMaster University in Hamilton, and with William Aide, Head of the Performance Department at the University of Toronto. He was the recipient of the Glenn Gould Composition Award in 1994 and 1995. In May 1998 he performed the complete piano works of Arnold Schönberg in Toronto, which he will perform again at the Guelph Spring Music Festival in 2000. Mr. Farah has been extremely active as a composer and pianist of twentieth-century repertoire, as well as being an exponent of free improvisation, and has performed a series of concerts in Toronto where he combined programming classical music along side with his own compositions and improvisations. In recent years, the culture, mythology, history, and music of the Middle East - in addition to the music of the European avant-garde - has had a strong influence on his artistic outlook. -J.K.F.

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