Pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico’s Extra Rivers, performing the composition by Frank Horvat, will likely be launched on Navona Data on January 24. It’s a type of observe 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 will also be damaging; it’s welcoming, however has a darker aspect.
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 integrated the whole lot 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 among my college students introduced in her piece,” she remembers.
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 gradual tempo.
“I performed by way of it, and it took hours as a result of the tempos had been very gradual,” Quilico says. She was anticipating her second baby on the time, and contacted Southam to speak in regards to the adjustments she wished to make to her work.
“The quick ones I sped up,” she instructed her. “She beloved it, and that was our joke for 30 years.”
The recording was made, and Quilico has carried out it stay a number of occasions since then — however by no means fairly the identical approach. “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 keep 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 clean on the floor, but it surely’s teeming with life.”
The collaborations with Southam had been fruitful. “She had this excellent capacity to create house across the sound.”
Quilico remembers a professor at Juilliard, when Christina was making 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 searching for in commissioning Extra Rivers from Frank Horvat. “It displays the Extra Rivers by Frank.” Horvat, as a composer, is usually involved with the atmosphere, utilizing his music to specific what many people are feeling about its fragility.
“I feel a whole lot of us are actually distressed proper now with what’s occurring,” Quilico says.
Alongside along with her music, she typically writes poetry. Expression and artwork is usually a solace. “A whole lot of this music, I discover this interesting proper now. It’s discovering the wonder in life at the least, 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’ll be able to let your individual nervousness 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 gradual music and not using a break.” It’s a bodily and psychological effort. “The sooner the music, the slower your respiratory must be. With gradual music, you must hear the inside element.”
Horvat’s music might be described as minimalist. “Once we’re taking part in the sounds, they create vibrations. We’re virtually like a tuning fork to sure sounds,” she says. “You utilize your breath to create that circulation and fluidity in your efficiency.”
Nervous stress can be utilized within the efficiency, however the physique wants to stay nonetheless. Good approach is necessary, specifically for minimalist works. “It must be performed from starting to finish.”
That approach, the viewers can take pleasure in and recognize the totally different moods and tempos, together with that “electrical present” throughline.
Her intuition that Horvat can be the proper 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 whole lot 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 achieved inside just a few hours, she stories, with the tempo adjusted for one piece on the fly. “He stated, I by no means considered it that approach, and I actually favor it this fashion. It was a extremely pretty 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 fantastic music making.” The work had its stay premiere in St. John’s in July 2024. “Each time I play, I don’t have an actual tempo.” As she notes, totally different pianos can lead to a distinct efficiency. “That they had a model new Steinway, and third River I may actually velocity up,” she says. “Typically 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, might be such an efficient mode of expression complicated feelings. “You’ll be able to really feel issues once you take heed to music that generally you don’t even wish to categorical,” 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 raised perceive their music.
Instructing is one thing that she’s not too long ago retired from. “I’ve bought so many tasks to file,” she says. “It’s good to get again to creating full-time.”
- Christina Petrowska Quilico’s Extra Rivers will likely 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.
