String Orchestra Works

Geoffrey Álvarez: music for strings

sample score • The Old Jewish Cemetery - excerpt • Fantasia - excerpt

combined duration 17′14″

Composer’s note

I had been playing the solo piano part in my concertino with the Arthur Rubenstein Philharmonic Orchestra of Łódż during the 2006 Tansman Composition Competition, in which I was a prize winning finalist. Two month later, I had an invitation from Tansman’s two daughters, Mireille Tansman Zanuttini and Marianne Tansman to visit their home in Paris. during which time, I played, on Tansman’s piano, his Alla Polacca, for viola and pian - his last work, written in 1986 which is the basis of the second piece of my Two Portraits of Łódż.

At bar 47 of my Fantasia, I begin developing away from the original Tansman, not returning there until bar 269 where, as at the beginning, the work by Tansman is totally unchanged. The journey away from the original consists of four stages:

the gradual addition of chromatic notes and repeating motivic fragments

an extension of the melody in parallel triads over a rich sustained harmony in the remote key of D flat,

a disturbing pizzicato passage where the melody is totally chromaticised and

a lead-back characterised by rising scales and unaltered fragments of the original theme heard against an F pedal, as if in a dream.

During my stay in Łódż, competition adjudicator Menachem Zur showed us round the Jewish Cemetery, leading to the composition of the first work of the suite, The Old Jewish Cemetery of Łódż. This is a simple and direct expression of a reaction to the starkness of the mortuary’s dark wooden biers and plain white walls. The lack of ostentation and the appalling history of the location seemed to impregnate the place with a heavy and oppressive sadness; this dictated the musical language, which moves from four in a bar to three, suggesting that, even in oppression, there may be some relief. Indeed, the works ends evoking the interior of the dome at the centre of the cemetery, decorated with lush palm trees set in Byzantine golden mosaic.

download licence: £1.50 each

printed copy • UK postage included: £12

printed copy • international postage included: £15

The last rehearsal of Two Portraits performed by the Musicians of all Saints conducted by Maria Copley on the day of the performance, September 21st 2024 All Saints Arts Centre, Friars' Walk, Lewes BN7 2lE.

Geoffrey Álvarez with conductor Maria Copley

Reduced rates often available for hire or purchase
for ensembles directly from Geoffrey Alvarez

sample score • excerpt • duration 23′11″

archive recording available for perusal from Geoffrey Alvarez

Composerʼs note

‘Témpano’ means both drum and ice in Spanish.

Structurally, it could be three trips round a Zen garden, each time one arrives at the beginning, it is no longer as it was the first time.

Five Voice Exposition

Quasi Canon producing a Ten Voice Elaboration

Simultaneous unfolding of formerly temporally distinct material; Chaotic Development

Each of these three sections contains three subjects:

The first subject is characterised by searing, stabbing, icy dissonances mainly given to the violins counterpointed with urgent upward surging triplets for the viola, rapid scrambling semiquavers on the cello, and insistent pizzicato on the double bass brought to a conclusion by manic quaver on the upper strings pitted against hieratic crotchets on the timpani.

The second is a multinational cantilena moving from Russia to North Africa and ending in Poland.

The third subject is a homage to Bartok, Shostakovich and Messiaen; a violent tutti recalling the atmosphere of Eisenstein's October.

Two Portraits of Łódż and Sinfonía Témpano were premiered at the Northern Ayres: an Anglo-Polish Celebration, St John’s Smith Square, November 15th and 16th, 2008.

download licence: £3 each

printed copy • UK postage included: £15

printed copy • international postage included: £21

Reduced rates for orchestral material
available for hire or purchase from Geoffrey Alvarez

for Olga Rudneva and the Saint Petersburg Cello Ensemble

sample score • digital realisation • duration 6′15″

download licence: £1 each

printed copy • UK postage included: £5

printed copy • international postage included: £7

Material available for hire or purchase from Geoffrey Alvarez

Rhapsodie in Blau und Gelb Nr. 2 - Download Sheet Music PDF file

This work was originally for bayan and cello alone. When the bayan soloist Tatjana Bulava was contacted by conductor Keno Weber to participate in a Ukrainian benefit concert, the maestro suggested I arrange the piece for strings, bayan and cello soloists and shorten the twenty minute ‘Rhapsodie’ to ten minutes.

video realisation of score

The revised work is based on traditional Ukrainian melodies
including the following:
Shchedryk; ‘The Generous One’ (Ukrainian pre-Christian New Year song
– a later version known as ‘Carol of the Bells’). Troitska -
Oy staryj didochok (Eastern Polissia, Summer)
Vesnyanochka-Panyanochka (Poltavshchyna, Spring)
Oy khodyt son kolo vikon – ‘The Dream Passes by the Window’ (Ukrainian children’s lullaby)
Nich yaka misiachna – ‘What a Moonlit Night’ by Mykola Lysenko (1885, Odessa) Anton kryve koleso (Eastern Polissia) Yak sy zhenysh, leginyku (Karpaty, Ivano-Frankivsk region, Wedding)
Oy uchora v kumy: (Naddniprianshchyna)
Šče ne vmerla Ukraina (Ukrainian national anthem)

Shchedryk and Šče ne vmerla Ukraina and were added to the original version enforcing solidarity with Ukrainian national identity. Oi Khodyt Son Kolo Vikon was the melody that inspired Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’ written in 1933 havingheard it sung by the Koshetz Ukrainian National Choir in the Carnegie Hall in 1929. This in turn led to me to name the present Ukrainian work ‘Rhapsodie in Blau und Gelb’ in homage to Gershwin’s monochrome ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ alluding to the colours of the Ukrainian flag.

The themes are initially presented in fragments and gradually coalesce into a unified presentation of the Ukrainian national anthem, a structural metaphor for the struggle of the Ukrainian people for the preservation of their nation.

The premiere in the Marktkirche conducted by Keno Weber
with bayan virtuoso Tatjana Bulava.

Geoffrey Álvarez with Alona Lvova and Maragrethe von Kleidt-Retzow, two distinguished ladies who read texts from Heimat so fern, so nah - Ukrainian Frauen in Hannover.

Home