CONCERT WILL EVOKE DARK MEMORIES OF HIROSHIMA
Chamber music group marks anniversary of U.S. dropping A-bomb on Japanese city
On Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. detonated the first of two nuclear weapons over the Japanese city of Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. The second bomb hit Nagasaki on Aug. 9. These two events remain the only uses of nuclear armaments in war. The death toll was immense. Scholars still debate the decision to use the nuclear weapons.
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the event that ushered in the nuclear age.
To remember that terrible occasion, the Little Chamber Music and the Polygon Gallery are presenting a concert to be streamed across both Facebook and YouTube platforms. On Aug. 6 at 8:15 a.m., 42 string players will gather in the Polygon Gallery’s Seaspan Pavilion to perform Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima.
This 1961 composition from the late composer typically incorporates 52 stringed instruments. Owing to COVID-19 limits, 42 musicians will gather along with conductor Janna Sailor — founder and artistic director of the Allegra Chamber Orchestra, Canada’s only all-female professional orchestra — to present the work with other production staff rounding out the gathering to a total of 50 persons.
“We’re going to be inside the gallery and the free streaming concert is being directed by filmmaker John Bolton (Opus 59 Films, Aim for the Roses), and we’ll also be amplifying it outside the Polygon Gallery, where there is that giant public space at Lonsdale Quay,” said Little Chamber Music’s Mark Haney. “Even with 10 fewer musicians, we think we can pull it off by removing a few players in each section. The whole idea only really clicked into place about a month ago, as no one was sure what was going to be possible.”
Marking significant historical anniversaries has been part and parcel of Little Chamber Music’s free public performances. The group regularly mounts moving and unique Remembrance Day shows at Mountain View Cemetery.
Human Shadow Etched in Stone will be no different. Aside from the Penderecki, three new commissions are also being performed.
Local composers Jordan Nobles, Robyn Jacob and Rita Ueda all have new pieces featured. Ueda actually won the 2014 Penderecki Prize. She’s pleased to participate in the event with her piece, Let Us Not be the Reason Why Somebody Out There is Praying for Peace.
“There are many viewpoints and reactions to the use of the nuclear bomb, and its historical ramifications are many,” said Ueda. “I chose to focus on what we can do as people today, moving forward in the present day, rather than a reaction to the historical and ethical ramifications of the bomb. There is one single voice in the piece playing one single melody throughout, but you can’t make it out while the other players are performing, until the conductor closes down each of the other voices — the chatter — and you suddenly make it out clearly and realize it was there all along.”
From writing new orchestra pieces to capturing the uniqueness on film, Human Shadow Etched in Stone promises to be unusual.
Filmmaker Bolton was a switcher for the cameras at the VSO for a time and said one of the biggest challenges was the inability to move the fixed cameras to get different close-ups or angles.
The Penderecki piece is designed in such a way that it never will sound the same twice and Bolton wanted to get that element into his filming.
“We’re shooting in a great location with great light and can get in so much closer to the musicians than you would ever be able to do in an orchestral audience setting,” said Bolton. “So what I want to do is capture both the entire ensemble in wide-angle shots, but also get in close to showcase some of the really distinct extended techniques in each piece, from bowing to pizzicato and others. I also want to get the musicians’ faces, as well as this is an incredibly intense and terrifying piece.”
With the right congruence between the filmmaking and the music-making, as well as capturing the three other works in their first recording, Human Shadow Etched in Stone appears ready to be another feather in Little Chamber Music’s impressive display of its unique approach to performance.