Elena Kats-Chernin

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Kats-Chernin, 2018

Elena Kats-Chernin (born November 4, 1957 in Tashkent ) is an Uzbek - Australian composer .

Life

Elena Kats-Chernin grew up in Yaroslavl from the age of four and initially studied at the Gnessin Institute in Moscow ; In 1975 she emigrated to Australia with her family. A scholarship enabled her to study with Helmut Lachenmann from 1980 to 1982 . Kats-Chernin became known in Europe at the beginning of the 1990s through performances by the Ensemble Modern as well as numerous stage music for productions by Andrea Breth (especially at the Vienna Burgtheater ). After living in Germany for 13 years, she returned to Australia in 1994; she lives in the suburbs of Sydney .

Initially committed to the European avant-garde, Kats-Chernin's compositional style changed significantly in the late 1990s, not least after one of her three sons was diagnosed with schizophrenia . Since then, her music can be described as a relaxed and vital appropriation of various traditions, which also easily integrates popular sources such as Klezmer and Music Hall sounds into her style. It is approachable and virtuoso without being populist.

Kats-Chernin wrote her first opera Iphis in 1997. a. to the Swedish film classic The Fuhrmann des Todes by Victor Sjöström or to Menschen am Sonntag by Robert Siodmak and Billy Wilder . In 2009, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Joseph Haydn's death, she wrote a composition for the piano trio Calliope Dreaming , which was performed at the KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen in Hanover and by the Haydn Trio Eisenstadt .

The composer also wrote new arrangements of early music , for example of the three surviving operas by Claudio Monteverdi : Orpheus , Odysseus and Poppea . The traditional musical material of these operas essentially contains the melody and bass lines, but almost no information on instrumentation. The revisions were performed at the Komische Oper Berlin as the Monteverdi cycle, directed by Barrie Kosky and under the musical direction of André de Ridder .

Her children's opera Snow White and the 77 Dwarfs was also staged at the Komische Oper Berlin. Susanne Felicitas Wolf wrote the libretto .

Elena Kats-Chernin's work, many of which was created for internationally prominent clients and recorded on CD, encompasses all genres: music theater, dance, orchestra, concert, ensemble, chamber and solo music, choral and vocal compositions. For several years her piece Eilza Aria served as the musical hallmark of the "For the Journey" advertising campaign by the British financial services company Lloyds and earned her great media fame.

Works (selection)

Operas

  • Iphis , 1997
  • Matricide, the Musical , 1998
  • Mr Barbeque , 2002
  • Rage of Life , 2010 (Libretto: Igor Bauersima )
  • George , 2014 (Libretto: Axel Ranisch )
  • The Divorce , 2015 (4-part TV soap opera)
  • Snow White and the 77 dwarfs , 2015 (children's opera)
  • Whiteley , 2019
  • Jim Button and Lukas the Engine Driver , 2019 (children's opera based on the novel by Michael Ende )
  • The Wind in the Willows , 2019/20 (children's opera based on the book by Kenneth Grahame )

Ballets

  • Wild Swans , 2003 (Australian Ballet, choreography: Meryl Tankard)
  • Material Men , 2015 (Choreography: Shobana Jeyasingh)
  • The Three Dancers , 2015 (based on Picasso, Rambert Dance Company, choreography: Didy Veldman)

singing

  • Rockhampton Garden Symphonies for solos, choirs and orchestra
  • Symphonia Eluvium for choir and orchestra (2011, to commemorate the flood disaster in Queensland)
  • Prelude and Cube for choir and orchestra (2014, text: Magnificat & Martin Luther )

Instrumental works

(often several versions with different casts)

  • Butterflying
  • Blue Silence
  • Cadences, Deviations, and Scarlatti
  • Calliope Dreaming
  • Chamber of Horrors
  • Charleston Noir
  • Clocks
  • Cinema
  • Frankenstein (incidental music, 2013)
  • Gypsy Ramble
  • In tension
  • Intermezzo Days
  • Page turn
  • Peggy's Minute Rag
  • Phoenix story
  • Purple Prelude
  • Russian rags
  • Schubert Blues
  • Slicked back tango
  • Spirit and the Maiden
  • Still life
  • Stubborn in major
  • Keys
  • Variations in a Serious Black Dress
  • Velvet Revolution
  • Wild Rice
  • Zoom and Zip

Orchestral works

  • Retonica
  • Stairs
  • Wild Swans Suite
  • Mythic
  • Re-Collecting ASTORoids (Homage to Astor Piazzolla )
  • Big Rhap

Solo concerts

  • Displaced Dances for piano and orchestra
  • 2nd piano concerto
  • Ancient Letters Harpsichord Concerto (for Mahan Esfahani )
  • Violin Concerto
  • Garden of Dreams for didgeridoo , piano and orchestra
  • Ornamental Air for basset clarinet and orchestra
  • Night and Now for flute and orchestra
  • The Witching Hour for eight double basses and orchestra (2016, commissioned by the Australian World Orchestra )

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ [1] ABC Radio National, Interview in The Spirit of Things , June 17, 2016
  2. ↑ [2] Biography at Boosey & Hawkes , accessed December 1, 2017
  3. ↑ [3] ABC Radio National, Feature "Blue Silence" (2006)
  4. ^ [4] Komische Oper Berlin, Elena Kats-Chernin
  5. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from February 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Komische Oper Berlin, André de Ridder
  6. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from January 14, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Komische Oper Berlin, Snow White and the 77 dwarfs
  7. ↑ [5] "For the Journey" commercial on Youtube
  8. ^ " The Divorce : Putting the Opera into the Soap," December 1, 2015
  9. ↑ Whiteley , Opera Australia , accessed May 3, 2019
  10. ↑ Jim Knopf and Lukas the engine driver , Komische Oper Berlin , accessed on May 3, 2019
  11. ↑ The Wind in the Willows , Boosey & Hawkes , accessed May 3, 2019
  12. ↑ "At the witching hour, it's all about the (double) bass" , The Australian September 24, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Kats-Chernin, Elena
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Uzbek-Australian composer
DATE OF BIRTH November 4th 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Tashkent , Uzbek SSR