Program Books/Conrad Tao, piano/Conrad Tao, piano Program

PROGRAM

Johannes BRAHMS (1833–1897) Klavierstücke, Op. 118 (1893)

I. Intermezzo

David FULMER (b. 1981) I have loved a stream and a shadow (With glitter of sun-rays, Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven) (2023)

I.

BRAHMS Klavierstücke, Op. 118 (1893)

II. Intermezzo
III. Ballade
IV. Intermezzo

Rebecca SAUNDERS (b. 1967) Mirror, mirror on the wall (1994)
BRAHMS Klavierstücke, Op. 118 (1893)

V. Romanze

INTERMISSION

Todd MOELLENBERG Leg of Lamb (after Bernadette Mayer) (2020)
FULMER I have loved a stream and a shadow… (2023)

II. —
III.

Maurice RAVEL (1875–1937) Gaspard de la nuit (1908)

Ondine
Le gibet
Scarbo

BRAHMS Klavierstücke, Op. 118 (1893)

VI. Intermezzo

TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS

Leg of Lamb
by Bernadette Mayer
 
A line
Break could reflect
The way the sun breaks
Through the clouds or breakfast
Or, this rainbow begins here
And then’s over
There
The aurora borealis can be
All over the sky
Wherever you look
Not in one place
Like north
Up and down
East and west, southwest
Side-saddle, acrobatic as a squirrel
A parhelion (sun pillar) appears
On each side of the sun in cities
Is an e-mail directional?
I guess I’ll just think
And be as smart as in dreams
So they won’t come to get me
And take me away to
Zanzibar, the mental asylum, the hospital
The jail, turn the line’n you wind up in
Antarctica Australia Mesoamerica mesothelioma
The middle of nowhere somewhere
You’ve left all the slush
Behind back there where the line begins, ends
Do we notice? Yes
Are we sorry? No, maybe, always
Sometimes never we will never come to an end because
Starting over’s our addiction, a dead
End and where does that leave
Us?
 
from Gaspard de la nuit
Aloysius Bertrand
 
Ondine
One Perfect Rose[Dorothy Parker]
Je croyais entendre
Une vague harmonie enchanter mon sommeil,
Et près de moi s’épandre un murmure pareil
Aux chants entrecoupés d’une voix triste et tendre.
Charles Brugnot, Les deux génies

Écoute! – Écoute! – C’est moi, c’est Ondine qui frôle de ces gouttes d’eau les losanges sonores de ta fenêtre illuminée par les mornes rayons de la lune; et voici, en robe de moire, la dame châtelaine qui contemple à son balcon la belle nuit étoilée et le beau lac endormi.

Chaque flot est un ondin qui nage dans le courant, chaque courant est un sentier qui serpente vers mon palais, et mon palais est bâti fluide, au fond du lac, dans le triangle du feu, de la terre et de l’air.

Écoute ! – Écoute ! – Mon père bat l’eau coassante d’une branche d’aulne verte, et mes sœurs caressent de leurs bras d’écume les fraîches îles d’herbes, de nénuphars et de glaîeuls, ou se moquent du saule caduc et barbu qui pêche à la ligne.

Sa chanson murmurée, elle me supplia de recevoir son anneau à mon doigt, pour être l’époux d’une Ondine, et de visiter avec elle son palais, pour être le roi des lacs.

Et comme je lui répondais que j’aimais une mortelle, boudeuse et dépitée, elle pleura quelques larmes, poussa un éclat de rire, et s’évanouit en giboulées qui ruisselèrent blanches le long de mes vitraux bleus.

I thought I heard
A faint harmony that enchants my sleep.
And close to me radiates an identical murmur
Of songs interrupted by a sad and tender voice.
—Charles Brugnot, The Two Spirits

Listen! – Listen! – It is I, it is Ondine who brushes drops of water on the resonant panes of your windows lit by the gloomy rays of the moon; and here in gown of watered silk, the mistress of the chateau gazes from her balcony on the beautiful starry night and the beautiful sleeping lake.

Each wave is a water sprite who swims in the stream, each stream is a footpath that winds towards my palace, and my palace is a fluid structure, at the bottom of the lake, in a triangle of fire, of earth and of air.

Listen! – Listen! – My father whips the croaking water with a branch of a green alder tree, and my sisters caress with their arms of foam the cool islands of herbs, of water lilies, and of corn flowers, or laugh at the decrepit and bearded willow who fishes at the line.

Her song murmured, she beseeched me to accept her ring on my finger, to be the husband of an Ondine, and to visit her in her palace and be king of the lakes.

And as I was replying to her that I loved a mortal, sullen and spiteful, she wept some tears, uttered a burst of laughter, and vanished in a shower that streamed white down the length of my blue stained glass windows.

Le gibet The Gibbet
Que vois-je remuer autour de ce Gibet? —Faust

Ah! ce que j’entends, serait-ce la bise nocturne qui glapit, ou le pendu qui pousse un soupir sur la fourche patibulaire?

Serait-ce quelque grillon qui chante tapi dans la mousse et le lierre stérile dont par pitié se chausse le bois?

Serait-ce quelque mouche en chasse sonnant du cor autour de ces oreilles sourdes à la fanfare des hallali?

Serait-ce quelque escarbot qui cueille en son vol inégal un cheveu sanglant à son crâne chauve?

Ou bien serait-ce quelque araignée qui brode une demi-aune de mousseline pour cravate à ce col étranglé?

C’est la cloche qui tinte aux murs d’une ville sous l’horizon, et la carcasse d’un pendu que rougit le soleil couchant.

What do I see stirring around that gibbet? —Faust

Ah! that which I hear, was it the north wind that screeches in the night, or the hanged one who utters a sigh on the forked gallows?

Was it some cricket who sings lurking in the moss and the sterile ivy, which out of pity covers the floor of the forest?

Was it some fly in chase sounding the horn around those ears deaf to the fanfare of the halloos?

Was it some scarab beetle who gathers in his uneven flight a bloody hair from his bald skull?

Or then, was it some spider who embroiders a half-measure of muslin for a tie on this strangled neck?

It is the bell that tolls from the walls of a city, under the horizon, and the corpse of the hanged one that is reddened by the setting sun.

Scarbo
Scarbo
Il regarda sous le lit, dans la cheminée, dans le bahut;
– personne. Il ne put comprendre par où il s’était
introduit, par où il s’était évadé.
—Hoffmann, Contes nocturnes

Oh! que de fois je l’ai entendu et vu, Scarbo, lorsqu’à minuit la lune brille dans le ciel comme un écu d’argent sur une bannière d’azur semée d’abeilles d’or!Que de fois j’ai entendu bourdonner son rire dans l’ombre de mon alcôve, et grincer son ongle sur la soie des courtines de mon lit!

Que de fois je l’ai vu descendre du plancher, pirouetter sur un pied et rouler par la chambre comme le fuseau tombé de la quenouille d’une sorcière!

Le croyais-je alors évanoui? le nain grandissait entre la lune et moi comme le clocher d’une cathédrale gothique, un grelot d’or en branle à son bonnet pointu!

Mais bientôt son corps bleuissait, diaphane comme la cire d’une bougie, son visage blêmissait comme la cire d’un lumignon— et soudain il s’éteignait.

He looked under the bed, in the chimney,
in the cupboard; – nobody. He could not
understand how he got in, or how he escaped.
—Hoffmann, Nocturnal Tales

Oh! how often have I heard and seen him, Scarbo, when at midnight the moon glitters in the sky like a silver shield on an azure banner strewn with golden bees.How often have I heard his laughter buzz in the shadow of my alcove, and his fingernail grate on the silk of the curtains of my bed!

How often have I seen him alight on the floor, pirouette on one foot and roll through the room like the spindle fallen from the wand of a sorceress!

Did I think him vanished then? the dwarf appeared to stretch between the moon and myself like the steeple of a gothic cathedral, a golden bell wobbling on his pointed cap!

But soon his body developed a bluish tint, translucent like the wax of a candle, his face blanched like melting wax— and suddenly his light went out.