What to Listen For at Rivers & Streams
By Jonathan Raabe
Ars Nova Singers opens its 41st season on October 9 with two works for choir and classical guitar, sixty-nine years apart, and one guest artist who is the reason the newer of them exists.
The program
Corrado Margutti, Rivers (2020), for choir and guitar — Prologue: Children in Need · 1. Balada de la placeta · 2. All’ultima sera · 3. Noctis partes alteræ · 4. Rivers · 5. Le cantique éternel, chanté dès l’exil · 6. Herbsttag · 7. Cordero de Dios
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Romancero Gitano, Op. 152 (1951), texts by Federico García Lorca — 1. Baladilla de los tres ríos · 2. La guitarra · 3. Puñal · 4. Procesión · 5. Memento · 6. Baile · 7. Crótalo
Nicolò Spera, six-string classical guitar.
Four things to listen for
The quotation at the start. The first movement of Rivers, “Balada de la placeta,” is a paraphrase of the first movement of the Romancero, “Baladilla de los tres ríos.” The 2020 work opens by acknowledging the 1951 work standing next to it.
Three rivers, in the first minute. The Romancero begins with the Guadalquivir running through Andalusia between orange and olive trees, and Granada’s two smaller streams coming down from the snow to the wheat — one of tears, the other of blood. The title of the concert is in its opening movement.
Mozart, buried in the third movement. “Noctis partes alteræ” contains the twelve-tone row that appears, apparently by accident, in Don Giovanni — a curiosity the composer Darius Milhaud was the first to point out, in 1953.
The guitar arguing rather than accompanying. In both works the instrument is a character in the texture, not a support under it. The clearest single moment is “La guitarra,” a Lorca poem about a guitar, sung while a guitar plays — and which ends by calling the instrument a heart wounded by five swords, meaning the guitarist’s five fingers.
Should you prepare?
We asked. Spera said no: “come unprepared because it’s musical and doesn’t need preparation… let it hit you and see what happens and then do some research after.”
Then he named one poet to read anyway, which tells you how seriously to take the first answer.
Everything we have written
- Meet the guest artist: Nicolò Spera on Rivers, Turoldo, and the ten-string guitar
- Two works that quote each other
- The composer who left Italy and taught Hollywood to score
- Why Nicolò Spera commissioned a piece about immigration
- Lorca, and the title almost everyone gets wrong
- Read Turoldo: the poet Nicolò Spera insisted on
- Six languages, one libretto: the poets inside Rivers
The performances
Friday, October 9, 7:30 pm — Mountain View United Methodist Church, 355 Ponca Place, Boulder.
Saturday, October 10, 7:30 pm — St. Paul Center for Music and the Arts, 1600 Grant Street, Denver. This performance is also available as a livestream.
Sunday, October 11, 4:00 pm — United Church of Christ, 1500 9th Avenue, Longmont.
Tickets, including the livestream, are on the Rivers & Streams page. If something is unclear, email Kim at the office — she answers.
