Music Transcends Nationality in First Composition Exchange

What would it be like if Chopin and Beethoven were foreign exchange students at Columbia? At 8 p.m. tomorrow evening, an original concert at the Kaufman Center’s Merkin Hall will simulate that music-lover’s fantasy.

Featuring five premieres written by student composers from all over the globe and performed by the renowned Argento Chamber Ensemble, the concert is the second of three in the very first musical composition exchange among the Paris Conservatory, the Berlin Academies of Music, and Columbia University.

All concerts are free and open to the public and promise musical internationalism on an intimate level. The pieces are written for a smaller number of instruments—several are septets—and an open discussion will follow the concert, where audience members can ask the composers questions or discuss what they have heard.

By the end of the composition exchange this fall, a total of 15 original works will have premiered in three different cities across the globe. Tomorrow’s concert here in New York will feature a total of five separate works—two by students from the Berlin Academies of Music, two from the Paris Conservatory, and one from Columbia University.

The diversity of the exchange, however, does not end with the schools that the students attend. The student composers themselves are not all originally from the countries in which they currently study. Iñigo Giner Miranda studies at one of the Berlin Academies, but is Spanish. Adrian Borredo, from the Paris Conservatory, also hails from Spain, and Lu Wang, a music graduate student here at Columbia, is originally from Beijing.

More profound, however, is the way in which the student composers have written their pieces and constructed them around ideas that one would be hard-pressed to find in an ordinary classical concert. As contemporary music, these works promise to defy the expectations of what a concert-goer might normally see or hear. The pieces focus on different sounds, physical movements, or sense of time, and display their ideas in unusual ways—some use a non-traditional combination of instruments, while others use ordinary everyday items as musical instruments—Laurent Durupt’s piece requires chains and a large clothespin.

In contrast, Wang has written a traditional septet with oboe, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, percussion, and cello. Thematically, however, her piece is anything but standard fare­—she says it is “related to the transliteration of a dialect in China,” and that through the cello, which represents the human voice “singing” in microtones, the listener can almost hear the tonal Chinese language. Rather than focusing on simply one sound, her piece is more about the individual lines that each of the seven instruments carry.

In Miranda’s piece, written for a singer and a septet, the qualities that set it apart are its “theatrical elements.” Not all elements are necessarily based in sound, Miranda says, such as the text, or movement—at one point, for example, the performers will gesture with their instruments as if they are playing, but will not make any sound. In a motion that some might consider contrary to music, the idea, he explained, is to “transmit musical content through movement.” His piece is titled “La Casa de Asterión.” Asterión is another name for the Minotaur of Greek mythology.

Both Durupt and Borreda wrote pieces that explore the idea of time. Durupt says he was inspired by the philosopher Henri Bergson and the way he explained the feeling of “real time,” time as a continuum that is impossible to split. “I tried to find a way to make musical time with that idea,” he said. Borreda, on the other hand, describes his piece as trying to freeze time for the listener. It correlates to the idea in fine arts, he said, that “there is a kind of movement” inside a picture. Listening to Durupt and Borreda’s pieces in contrast to one another should prove especially interesting.

The Argento Chamber Ensemble, who will premiere these pieces for the composers, is highly regarded by the New York Times as a group whose “technical polish lets them move easily through the rhythmic and harmonic thickets of ... contemporary styles.” Directed by Michel Galante, the group has been in business since 2000, and specializes in performing music by modern composers, perfect for tomorrow’s occasion. But this exchange is not just musical and academic—along with classes, presentations of pieces, and discussions among the student-composers and professors here at Columbia, the students will also experience the culture of New York City.

Since their arrival here a few days ago, the students have been going to concerts, museums, and exploring the city. The exchange is intended to foster connections not simply through music, but through cultural interactions as well, as Kate Soper, who helps to run this exchange, explained. The diversity of the composers who are in New York this week lends itself perfectly to this purpose.