Pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico’s Extra Rivers, performing the composition by Frank Horvat, can be launched on Navona Information on January 24. It’s a form of comply with as much as her seminal recording of Ann Southam’s Rivers in full within the early Eighties.
It’s the qualities of water that impressed each items and their interpretations by the acclaimed Canadian pianist. It’s obligatory 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 set 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 all the things 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 listing 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 sort of attention-grabbing. One in every of my college students introduced in her piece,” she recollects.
That was again in 1981. Southam had not put many indications in her work total. The music that had been handed alongside to Christina was marked to be carried out at a sluggish tempo.
“I performed by 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 concerning the modifications she wished to make to her work.
“The quick ones I sped up,” she advised her. “She beloved it, and that was our joke for 30 years.”
The recording was made, and Quilico has carried out it reside a number of instances since then — however by no means fairly the identical means. “I play it in a different 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 after I did Pond Life, we talked to all of the our bodies of water. While you have a look at a drop of rain in a pond, it transforms that vitality,” she provides “The pond could also be clean on the floor, nevertheless it’s teeming with life.”
The collaborations with Southam had been fruitful. “She had this glorious capability to create house across the sound.”
Quilico recollects a professor at Juilliard, when Christina was getting ready Rachmaninoff’s third piano concerto. The trainer 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 taking part in 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 in search of 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 precise what many people are feeling about its fragility.
“I feel a number of us are actually distressed proper now with what’s occurring,” Quilico says.
Alongside together with her music, she typically writes poetry. Expression and artwork is usually 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 taking part in it, generally I feel we get very anxious,” she says. “You’re making an attempt to make a press release, you possibly can let your individual anxiousness floor within the efficiency. I’ve labored arduous to create my very own approach, to have the ability to play an hour’s price of quick and sluggish music with no break.” It’s a bodily and psychological effort. “The sooner the music, the slower your respiratory needs to be. With sluggish music, it’s a must to hear the inside element.”
Horvat’s music will be described as minimalist. “After we’re taking part in the sounds, they create vibrations. We’re virtually like a tuning fork to sure sounds,” she says. “You employ your breath to create that movement and fluidity in your efficiency.”
Nervous pressure can be utilized within the efficiency, however the physique wants to stay nonetheless. Good approach is vital, specifically for minimalist works. “It must be performed from starting to finish.”
That means, the viewers can get pleasure from and admire the totally different moods and tempos, together with that “electrical present” throughline.
Her intuition that Horvat can 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 a number of directions into his music. “Some composers, each bar is filled with directions,” she says. As with Southam’s unique Rivers, Quilico felt the tempos could possibly be adjusted in some areas. “He was all very supportive of that.”
The recording was performed inside a number of hours, she reviews, with the tempo adjusted for one piece on the fly. “He mentioned, I by no means considered it that means, and I actually want it this fashion. It was a very beautiful working relationship,” she provides. “Each time you play it’s barely totally different, so let’s go along with that.”
It was a fruitful collaboration. “We got here up with some great music making.” The work had its reside premiere in St. John’s in July 2024. “Each time I play, I don’t have a precise tempo.” As she notes, totally different pianos may end up in a distinct efficiency. “They’d a model new Steinway, and third River I may actually velocity up,” she says. “Usually the recordings are a bit extra intimate.”
The Expressive Energy of Music
Horvat typically 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 set 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, will be such an efficient mode of expression complicated feelings. “You may really feel issues while you take heed to music that generally you don’t even need to categorical,” she says. “The entire world goes a bit loopy. I all the time 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.
Instructing is one thing that she’s not too long ago retired from. “I’ve received so many initiatives to document,” she says. “It’s good to get again to creating full-time.”
- Christina Petrowska Quilico’s Extra Rivers can 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.
