Composers' Recital Series

MRITYUNJAY S.: Love Itself Shall Slumber On 

Maria Leonardi, voice
Ian Medina, piano

MARCEA MCGUIRE: Sink

Yinfei Li, violin

THEODORE Q. DONG: An Expression of Habitually Silent Thoughts

Sanjana Sri Bellapu, piano

DIEGO PERALTA GONZALES: Altiplano (nubes, vientos y tormentas)

Aaron Dore, flute
Enrique Hernandez de Tejada, cello
Mauricio Campos González, piano 
Ritvik Yaparpalvi, percussion
Ian Medina, conductor

MRITYUNJAY S.: Untitled for piano and electronics 

BARRETT ALLEN: veux-tu te marier avec moi? 

1. Subtlety
2. Difference 

Annie McDougall, violin 
Raimi Neal, violin
Kaedyn Colton, viola
Enrique Hernandez de Tejada, cello

—INTERMISSION—

RYAN JOHNSTON: Tres Canciones de Garcia Lorca 

1. Eco del reloj 
2. Adivinanza de la guitarra 
3. Meditación primera y ultima 

ZEXUAN DING: Fog

Christina Junga, violin

JACKSON ALFREY: Two Steps

Mason Davis, A clarinet
Annika Pollock, A clarinet
Alainna Pack, bass clarinet

TIFFANY HAEJAE HWANG: Spring 

Lauren Oeser, violin
Leon Baker, violin

PRANAV YAGNARAMAN: A morning in Java 

Zhuoyuntong (Amy) Wu, marimba
Phina Xue, vibraphone
Nick Stainbrook, glockenspiel
Yueyang (William) Shi, chimes

JULIAN DÜRR: You grow such pretty white flowers—Conducted by Julian Dürr

Aaron Dore, flute
Alainna Pack clarinet
Annica McDougall, violin I
Lauren Oeser, violin II
Lauren Wilson, viola
Nick Politi, cello
Ani Hutchens, celesta

MRITYUNJAY S.: Love Itself Shall Slumber On

This piece was written for the song project, and is based on the poem by Shelley: 

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory; 
Odours, when sweet violets sicken, 
Live within the sense they quicken. 
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, 
Are heap''d for the belovèd'' s bed; 
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, 
Love itself shall slumber on. 

As with most of my pieces, the piano writing is sparse and spacious, using sonorities as colors that sound and relate to each other through internal logic; while a vocal line soars freely above it.

MARCEA MCGUIRE: Sink

I can't swim, but I love being in water. I love the ocean, but I have a fear of drowning. Sink tells my own imaginary story of happily being at the beach, joyfully getting into the water, and then saving myself from downing.

THEODORE Q. DONG: An Expression of Habitually Silent Thoughts

I have always found the ambience of a quiet late night to be very charming. In my earlier teen years, I made it a habit to indulge in the peaceful silence of the nighttime air, left alone to the company of my memories, innermost thoughts, and my piano. This piece was conceived from this mindset of reminiscence and intimate self-reflection, and since then it has come to represent the nostalgia of a time in my life when I first began to find my compositional voice while enjoying the innocence of my last few years in high school. 

DIEGO PERALTA GONZALES: Altiplano (nubes, vientos y tormentas)

The first ideas of Altiplano (Andean Plateau) are inspired by the lonely, cold and ethereal landscapes that can be seen in Wiñaypacha (Eternity), a Peruvian film set in the Peruvian Andes, whose plot explores themes such as loneliness, abandonment, and nostalgia. The work is a personal representation of those landscapes and their elements, such as the clouds (nubes) and the wind (viento), as well as the feelings that, together with the plot of the film, they transmit to me. The piece has an ethereal character that explores the textures that are generated from the combination of the instruments, as well as the timbral possibilities of each one of them. The middle section is chaotic and intense, and represents the very usual storms (tormentas) that occur in the Peruvian Andes in the winter, and then moves on to a section that uses a traditional melody from the Peruvian highlands that my grandmother used to sing to me before going to sleep when I was a child. The end of the piece is very atmospheric and takes elements and gestures from the preceding sections. 

MRITYUNJAY S.: Untitled

Disabuse yourself of the notion that this piece isn't about you.

BARRETT ALLEN: veux-tu te marier avec moi? 

I love you.

RYAN JOHNSTON: Tres Canciones de Garcia Lorca 

This song cycle was written for Leigha Amick, a friend of mine whom I met at the 2019 European American Musical Alliance Summer Institute in Paris, France. By the time of the institute, I had already composed a song to an English translation of a poem by Federico Garcia Lorca. A few months later, Leigha reached out to me inquiring about if I'd want to write her a song cycle setting his poetry. I enthusiastically took the project up. While this cycle doesn't tell a story in the sense of say Dichterliebe or Die shöne Müllerin, the concept of time and its passing is a symbol connecting the three songs. I strive to create a soundworld in which musical time ebbs and flows. At once static and pensive, at another, conjuring a metaphysical plane in which time assumes an indifference to reality.

ZEXUAN DING: Fog

The piece titled Fog is like an enigma in our life. I am always used to following the direction of the sounds I heard to decide how my music develops. For this piece, I tried to change my approach to look for something different, but it seemed to be covered by this fog. I tried to unravel it step by step to find a sound different from the former works.

JACKSON ALFREY: Two Steps

Two Steps is primarily a sense of forward momentum. Closing my first year of study at the Conservatory, the piece acknowledges growth in its melodic freedom and its tone differentiation. Being a challenging piece to pull off, it also signifies the trust and gratitude I’ve developed for these players, who over the entire year I've grown extremely grateful for. As a send off to this first year and a bit of a peek into the grandiose scope I intend for future projects, please enjoy.

TIFFANY HAEJAE HWANG: Spring

Throughout this piece, I tried to portray an image of spring. This piece is for a violin duet and I tried to use some techniques that are specialized in violins, to produce various sounds.

PRANAV YAGNARAMAN: A morning in Java 

A morning in Java is a piece for a set of percussion instruments to imitate Indonesian gamelan music. It makes use of the Pelog scale, which is a scale used predominantly in gamelan music, and makes use of rhythmic patterns found in traditional Javanese and Balinese music. 

JULIAN DÜRR: You grow such pretty white flowers

you grow such pretty white flowers is a piece that illustrates my personal encounters with romance. This piece was inspired in part by my close colleague Theodore Doung’s thank you for pretending that time stopped with me, a piece that he wrote for solo piano discussing his “first encounter with romance,” and the journey of ups-and-downs within such.

My piece begins in E Major, a key I found, after listening to Theo’s work (which is, of course, in E Major), most adequately depicts bright and childlike romance; this is how I wanted to emotionally introduce the theme that will be present throughout the entirety of the work. E Major, to me, evokes innocence, purity, and calm. Within the introduction you will hear two statements of the piece’s theme—first in the celesta, accompanied lightly by muted strings. The harmony here being intentionally very conservative, almost completely tonal/diatonic. As the consequent idea approaches, and then chromatically sequences to a close, slowly more and more chromaticism/dissonance is introduced in the harmony. The second statement of the theme is in solo violin, accompanied immediately by very dissonant chords, the consequent idea is then heard as a chordal cadenza in the celesta, chromatically sequencing again, but twice as fast as before.

After the introduction, the theme runs away and takes on many journeys: as an impressionist-style dreamy flute solo (representing longing, curiosity, and wonder), as a post-romantic-style fragmentation that wanders around the ensemble and finds its way into being a brief violin duet (representing struggle, frustration, and hardships); the consequent idea is heard only once after this, as an even faster chromatic sequence in solo celesta, before the penultimate statement of the theme is presented as a tutti rising sequence (representing triumph, passion, and adoration).

Finally, the piece is brought to a close with a final statement of the theme in D-flat Major, developed as a quasi-aleatoric solo in the celesta (representing calm, maturity, and security). The change in the consequent idea (becoming faster each time) is to represent that as love matures, it can become harder to follow, endures more hardships, and requires being much more discerning every time we approach it—and in this case, listen for it—as it is easy to feel as though it is “running away.” D-flat is my favorite key, a key that feels like home, encapsulates what I hear when I think of romantic love, and never ceases to bring me comfort. Synesthetically, Db-flat also brings me hues of purple, my favorite color—I chose to end the piece in D-flat as to hopefully leave the listener in a similar atmosphere. The former title of this piece was “as we mature, together,” and though I ultimately found this title to be too literalist, the relevance is still worth mentioning.