Quartet for Clarinet and Strings
Composed by
Sylvie Bodorova
Premiered
by Bil Jackson, Ani Kavafian, Cynthia Phelps, and Colin Carr on March 22, 2013
When delving into different historical epochs while composing my works (Terezin Ghetto Requiem, the oratorios Juda Maccabeus and Moses, the orchestra song cycle Lingua angelorum for the era of Emperor Rudolf II, and the melodrama Kafka’s Träume), I have often come up against the fact that all the problems that we encounter “rotate” with us—humans—for centuries. In some of the historical periods it is possible to trace them in a slightly different form, while in others they are sometimes the same, almost identical. I am always struck by how little we humans are able to learn from our mistakes. It is perhaps because everything happens over such long stretches of time so that human memory and experience are not able to embrace it, or perhaps it is simply because the young, not believing the old who remember a lot more, must gain their own experience. Or perhaps we are incorrigible. The principle of rotations is a musical principle, too, and the whole cycle is built upon it—upon a principle of construction in both the micro- and the macrostructure. My work “Rotationes” was commissioned by the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music. I return to Arizona after ten years, and I return very gladly. I am very grateful for this wonderful opportunity, and I value greatly the support I have received. In the economically straitened times today it is far from being a matter of course. —Sylvie Bodorová
Sponsored by: Bob Foster, in memory of Betty Cochran, Suzanne and Charles Peters, and Jean-Paul Bierny and Chris Tanz