Double duty: Composer has two highprofile collaborations due in coming weeks.
South Mountain Concerts is celebrating its 100th season of bringing top-ranked string quartets and other chamber music to Pittsfield, Massachusetts. A centerpiece of the five-concert season that began Labor Day weekend is the upcoming recital by the Juilliard String Quartet on Sunday afternoon, Sept. 23.
It’s an auspicious event for more reasons than just the venue’s anniversary. The concert will be one of the Juilliard’s first with its new first violinist, Areta Zhulla. The quartet consisted of all men from its founding in 1946 until just two years ago when Astrid Schween became the cellist. Now, there’s gender parity in the Juilliard.
Along with classics by Beethoven and Dvorak, the Juilliard will also present a world premiere by Lembit Beecher. The 37-year-old New York City-based composer is collaborating with some top artists this month. Besides his new work for the venerable Juilliard, he’s also written a new opera for Opera Philadelphia. “Sky on Swings” runs Sept. 20-29 and stars the mezzo-sopranos Frederica von Stade and Marietta Simpson.
Beecher’s new quartet, titled “One Hundred Years Grows Shorter Over Time,” was commissioned by South Mountain but it’s not going to be a one-off performance. After the debut, the Juilliard is including the piece in more than a dozen other concerts this season.
The commission was in the works for several years. Beecher had been acquainted with Joseph Lin, the outgoing first violinist, ever since they were in a theory class together at Harvard. So while he was working on early sketches of the piece, Beecher had in mind Lin’s particular style with the instrument. But the final version is very much intended for Juilliard’s current players.
“The new violinist is amazing, she has a beautiful warmth and generosity to her playing,” says Beecher. “Every one of the players has such a distinctive character in the way they play and approach music. It’s been great for me to find special soloist music for each of them.”
Beecher was raised in Santa Cruz, California, by Estonian and American parents. The musical inspiration for the new quartet is a waltz tune written by his granduncle, the late Estonian composer Ilmar Kiiss.
“He wrote it in the 1950s a bit after the Soviet occupation,” says Beecher. “My brother is a violinist and I’m a pianist and in high school we’d play it every now and then. The music became a part of our lives and wormed its way into this piece.”
A quartet based on a musical memento from an ancestor fits easily into an ongoing series of works in which Beecher addresses the idea of memory. Just consider a few of his other titles: “And Then I Remember” (an oratorio), “The Art of Remembering” (a septet), and “Three Songs of Remembered Love” (a song cycle).
“Writing about memories is no different than writing about our identity or our humanity,” says Beecher. “Music is one thing well suited to an exploration of memory. Phrases and gestures and harmonies can have an association reflected
across time. You can create a sense of memory in a relatively short piece.”
It would seem a natural extension of Beecher’s work with memory that his upcoming opera is about Alzheimer’s. Yet the composer says the piece is firmly rooted in the here and now.
“Memory is the obvious question or issue at the root of anything about Alzheimer’s,” he says. “But the opera is more about the present than anything I’ve written.”
“Sky On Swings” is Beecher’s fourth opera and also his longest at about 75 minutes in duration. It is his second commission and debut with Opera Philadelphia, where he has been composer in residence. The new production is part of the company’s lively “018” festival that features 24 performances at a variety of venues over a compacted 10day period.
Beecher’s latest tells the story of two women who meet and form a loving bond at an Alzheimer’s care facility. Where most theatrical or literary works about the condition focus on the families, this is largely told from the perspective of the patients.
“There’s something cathartic about the piece,” says Beecher. “No story with Alzheimer’s ends well, people will know that going into it. The darkest stories are with the families who have to deal with it, and that’s not what the piece is about.”
In the libretto by Hannah Moscovitch the characters slip in and out of reality and fantasy. Memories seem to appear and disappear in the musical fabric of the 11-piece instrumental ensemble.
“The orchestral music is constantly shifting as little bits of recognizable melodies keep slipping out of our fingers,” explains Beecher.
The loving relationship between the two women is strengthened by their common condition. As Beecher explains, “They find it easier to be around someone else who has Alzheimer’s and who isn’t constantly asking them to remember stuff.” Joseph Dalton is a freelance writer based in Troy.