March 2011

DMM 2011 festival brochure

This month, we have started to explore Macedonian 20th/21st Century music. As part of a residency at the contemporary music festival Days of Macedonian Music, we played two quartet concerts, followed by a concert of solo and duo violin music. This was an exciting project for us: we worked on rarely performed quartets by three major Macedonian composers of the 20th Century: Tomislav Zografski (1934-2000), Vlastimir Nikolovski (1925-2001) and Toma Prošev (1931-1996).

Also on the programme were works by younger-generation Macedonian composers: Soni Petrovski, Goran Načevski, Bojana Petrović and Miroslav Spasov.

The variety of the musical material we covered is fascinating – 20th Century European music influences framed within a distinctive Macedonian approach, often incorporating elements from the rich folk music tradition. Please see the programme below for more information – some of the pieces link to the scores and live recordings from this concert.

We presented these works in the context of repertoire familiar to us and incorporating some of our favourite works written in the past 100 years: music by Bartók, Ligeti, Ives, Webern, and two of our favourite English composers, Nicola LeFanu and David Matthews. The solo/duo concert programme focused more on younger composers, and we brought music from America, UK, Sweden and Cyprus.

Here is the full programme:

DMM 2011

Kreutzer Quartet concerts (26/03/2011):

Concert 1

Charles Ives (1874-1954) – Scherzo (“Holding Your Own”) (1903, 1914)

Tomislav Zografski (1934-2000) – Quartet Op. 58 (1968)

David Matthews (1943 – ) – String Quartet No.10 (2001) Dedicated to the Kreutzers

Goran Načevski (1978 – ) – 5 Sketches for Violin and Cello (2010)

Soni Petrovski (1977 – ) – Quartet, 4th Movement

György Ligeti (1923-2006) – String Quartet No.2 (1968)

Concert 2

Anton Webern (1883-1945) – Six Bagatelles Op.9 (1913)

Vlastimir Nikolovski (1925-2001) – Quartet No. 2 (1985)

Tomislav Zografski – Il Canto (solo viola) (1982/83)

Nicola LeFanu (1947 – ) – Quartet No.3 (2010) Dedicated to the Kreutzers

Toma Prošev (1931-1996) – Mussandra No.19 (1981)

Toma Prošev – Oscillations (1967)

Béla Bartók (1881-1945) – String Quartet No.3 (1927)

Solos/duos (27/03/2011):

(Peter Sheppard Skærved, Mihailo Trandafilovski)

Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988) – Arc-en-ciel (2 vlns) (1973)

Dafina Zeqiri (1984 – ) – Dream (solo vln)

Rolf Martinsson (1956 – ) – Symbiosis (2 vlns) (2003)

Bojana Petrović – Teškoto (solo vln)

Evis Sammoutis (1979 – ) – Dimorphism (2 vlns) (2003-04)

Miroslav Spasov – So Dance … (2 vlns) (2003)

David Gorton (1978 – ) – 3 Caprices (2006 – 2010) Dedicated to Peter Sheppard Skærved

Mihailo Trandafilovski (1974 – ) – Violin Duos, selection from Čekori (2002-2005)

Michael Hersch (1971 – ) – 5 Fragments (2004) Dedicated to Peter Sheppard Skærved

Michael Alec Rose (1959 – ) – Everything Under the Sun: Four Seasons (2009)

For more information about all of the above (as well as other) Macedonian composers, please visit the Macedonian Composers’ Association (SOCOM) website.