Recital: Rituparna Mukherjee '24 MM, Viola

Gity Razaz | Spellbound

György Ligeti | Solo Viola Sonata

Hora Lunga
Loop
Facsar
Prestissimo con sordino
Lamento
Chaconne chromatique

Program note

Ligeti’s first encounter with the viola was in the year 1990 when he went to a concert of Tabea Zimmermann in Cologne. He was so mesmerized by ‘her particularly vigorous and pithy – and yet always tender – C string’ that he started immediately to work on his new Viola Sonata.
       The first movement, Hora Lunga, ‘evokes the spirit of Romanian folk music, which, together with Hungarian folk music and that of the Gipsies, made a strong impression on [Ligeti] during [his] childhood’. Hora Lunga literally means folk dance, but rather than a dance they are sung folk melodies. This movement is played solely on the C-string, and Ligeti uses the natural intervals (pure major third, pure minor seventh and the 11th harmonic). There are arrows indicating gradations of downward microtonal departures from normal intonation.
       Ligeti wrote the second movement, Loop, as a short viola piece in 1991 as a birthday present for Alfred Schlee, the ‘excellent publisher’. The title refers to the form wherein the same melody is repeated (in a loop) but the repetitions are varied and truncated as the piece continues. Ligeti writes in the preface of the Sonata, ‘the performer is therefore compelled to carry out daring position change which in the fast section of the movement creates a dangerous virtuosity’.
       The third movement, Facsar, feels as though it is the heart of the sonata. The title is a Hungarian verb meaning “to wrestle” or “to distort”. This word is also associated with the bitter sensation felt in the nose when one is about to cry.
       The fourth movement, Prestissimo con sordino, is a mirage as well as a machine. Ligeti uses polyrhythmic accentuation to give illusionistic melodic fragments that are eventually peeled away.
       The fifth movement, Lamento, is written in strict two-part writing which mainly consists of parallel seconds and sevenths (in conventional two-part writing, seconds and sevenths are to be avoided, while the perfect intervals – fourth, fifth, octave – are to be used).
       The sixth movement, Chaconne chromatique, is stated to be a wild exuberant dance in strongly accentuated three-four time with an ostinato bass line. The chromatic line goes on throughout the movement and is embellished by chords increase in intensity. These chords are said to make the viola sound like a “super viola”, creating more resonance and sound from the instrument.

Tigran Mansurian | Three Medieval Taghs for Viola and Percussion

Tagh to Crucifixion
Tagh to the Funeral of the Lord
Tagh to Resurrection (Havik)

Arvo Pärt | Fratres