Pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico’s Extra Rivers, performing the composition by Frank Horvat, shall be launched on Navona Information on January 24. It’s a type of comply with as much as her seminal recording of Ann Southam’s Rivers in full within the early Nineteen Eighties.
It’s the qualities of water that impressed each items and their interpretations by the acclaimed Canadian pianist. It’s needed for all times, however may also be harmful; it’s welcoming, however has a darker facet.
Petrowska Quilico commissioned the brand new work from Toronto composer Frank Horvat, a collection of seven items for solo piano.
Christina Petrowska Quilico: The Interview
Christina Petrowska Quilico, C.M., OOnt, FRSC, has been acknowledged for her contributions to the Canadian classical music by many accolades and awards, and a profession that has included every thing from the Romantics to model new music.
She was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada in 2021, and obtained the Ontario Arts Council’s Oskar Morawetz Award for Excellence in Music Efficiency in 2023. She has a list of greater than 60 recordings, with 4 JUNO nominations.
We talked to her about Rivers, then and now.
“The story of Rivers and the way I met Ann is kind of attention-grabbing. One in all my college students introduced in her piece,” she recollects.
That was again in 1981. Southam had not put many indications in her work general. The music that had been handed alongside to Christina was marked to be carried out at a sluggish tempo.
“I performed by means of it, and it took hours as a result of the tempos had been very sluggish,” Quilico says. She was anticipating her second little one on the time, and contacted Southam to speak in regards to the modifications she wished to make to her work.
“The quick ones I sped up,” she advised her. “She cherished it, and that was our joke for 30 years.”
The recording was made, and Quilico has carried out it dwell a number of instances since then — however by no means fairly the identical means. “I play it in another way each time.” It’s the character of the music, and in addition its inspiration. In 2009, Christina launched the album Pond Life, with compositions written for her by Southam. “I bear in mind once I did Pond Life, we talked to all of the our bodies of water. Once you take a look at a drop of rain in a pond, it transforms that power,” she provides “The pond could also be easy on the floor, but it surely’s teeming with life.”
The collaborations with Southam had been fruitful. “She had this glorious skill to create house across the sound.”
Quilico recollects a professor at Juilliard, when Christina was making ready Rachmaninoff’s third piano concerto. The instructor talked to her about an “electrical present” that runs from the piece from begin to end.
“It’s the identical with Ann’s music.” She mentions her sharp articulations, and says she reminds herself of a quote by artist Wassily Kandinsky earlier than enjoying her music. “Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings.”
Extra Rivers
That spirit of creation is what she was searching for in commissioning Extra Rivers from Frank Horvat. “It displays the Extra Rivers by Frank.” Horvat, as a composer, is commonly involved with the surroundings, utilizing his music to specific what many people are feeling about its fragility.
“I believe numerous us are actually distressed proper now with what’s happening,” Quilico says.
Alongside together with her music, she usually writes poetry. Expression and artwork could be a solace. “Quite a lot of this music, I discover this interesting proper now. It’s discovering the sweetness in life a minimum of, as artists.”
To carry out, the method is essential. “In enjoying it, typically I believe we get very anxious,” she says. “You’re attempting to make an announcement, you may let your individual anxiousness floor within the efficiency. I’ve labored laborious to create my very own approach, to have the ability to play an hour’s value of quick and sluggish music and not using a break.” It’s a bodily and psychological effort. “The quicker the music, the slower your respiration must be. With sluggish music, you must hear the inside element.”
Horvat’s music might be described as minimalist. “Once we’re enjoying the sounds, they create vibrations. We’re virtually like a tuning fork to sure sounds,” she says. “You employ your breath to create that circulation and fluidity in your efficiency.”
Nervous pressure can be utilized within the efficiency, however the physique wants to stay nonetheless. Good approach is essential, specifically for minimalist works. “It must be performed from starting to finish.”
That means, the viewers can get pleasure from and respect the completely different moods and tempos, together with that “electrical present” throughline.
Her intuition that Horvat could be the correct composer to method for the sequel to Rivers was apt.
“This was his tribute to Ann,” Quilico says. “We had talked about how I labored on them.” She notes that Frank additionally doesn’t put numerous directions into his music. “Some composers, each bar is stuffed with directions,” she says. As with Southam’s unique Rivers, Quilico felt the tempos may very well be adjusted in some areas. “He was all very supportive of that.”
The recording was performed inside a number of hours, she studies, with the tempo adjusted for one piece on the fly. “He mentioned, I by no means considered it that means, and I actually choose it this manner. It was a extremely pretty working relationship,” she provides. “Each time you play it’s barely completely different, so let’s go together with that.”
It was a fruitful collaboration. “We got here up with some great music making.” The work had its dwell premiere in St. John’s in July 2024. “Each time I play, I don’t have an actual tempo.” As she notes, completely different pianos may end up in a unique efficiency. “That they had a model new Steinway, and third River I may actually pace up,” she says. “Typically the recordings are a bit extra intimate.”
The Expressive Energy of Music
Horvat usually immerses himself in nature so as to have the ability to compose works that mirror its complexity, she factors out. Quilico says a Buddhist retreat that she participated in additionally affected her method to efficiency. “You place that into the music,” she says. “As a vibration of sounds on bodily matter, that’s actually what it’s.”
That’s why music, and classical music, might be such an efficient mode of expression advanced feelings. “You possibly can really feel issues while you take heed to music that typically you don’t even need to specific,” she says. “The entire world goes a bit loopy. I at all times inform my college students […] sound has no borders. All of us really feel the identical feelings.”
Composers, like all artists, are inherently a product of their time and its politics. She’d inform her college students, for instance, to learn the books that the composers had been studying on the time to higher perceive their music.
Educating is one thing that she’s not too long ago retired from. “I’ve obtained so many initiatives to report,” she says. “It’s good to get again to creating full-time.”
- Christina Petrowska Quilico’s Extra Rivers shall be launched on January 24, 2025; discover it [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is a Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. She is an skilled freelance author, blogger and writing teacher.