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Program Notes
Glaciers Red: Vistas Veiled is the outgrowth of Ching-chu Hu’s 2003 summer residency at the Leighton Studios of Banff Centre for the Arts. Below, the composer speaks to the programmatic aspect of the work:
Summer 2003, Banff. As fires spread out of control in Alberta, roads to Banff close. The Canadian Rockies hide behind dense gray smoke. Yet in the Columbia Icefield of Jasper National Park, snow-coaches continue to bring people to the Athabasca Glacier, which is melting every year and whose waters flow into the Pacific, Atlantic, and Arctic Oceans. A mining company had once literally decapitates Sulphur Mountain for its raw materials.
I am awe-struck by the beauty of the Canadian Rockies as well as the destructive force of man and nature. Some days, the skies are cerulean blue; other days bring a shroud of smoke and large gray snowflakes of ash. I can still recall the burning smell in the air and the feeling that the fires are at once nearby and far away. Coincidentally, Banff loses power at the same time the eastern part of North America is experiencing a massive blackout. All the while, the animals remain calm, tame, and only feet from my window.
Glaciers Red: Vistas Veiled represents my various sensory experiences that summer as man and nature collided and obscured my view.
“Icefields in August” opens with the piano alone, and features close scoring in the instrument’s upper register resulting in a shimmering effect that sets the mood for much of the piece—a mood perhaps best characterizes as ethereal and yet with a quiet intensity. The introduction continues past the point of the initial violin entry, for tonal and rhythmic clarity are not yet at hand. Gradually, however, A minor begins to emerge as prominent key center in tandem with the continual interplay between the two equal participants in what is a rich tableau—a tableau constructed with David and Gompper in mind. Two climactic gestures occur late in the movement (expressed as a double cadenza), the first is for the piano, while the more expansive of the gestures follows in the violin.
“Snow Ash” is slow moving and contemplative. Its rich harmonies are equally reminiscent of Copland and Paul Williams. Much of the romantically steeped piece is based upon a repeating pattern presented by the piano in long note values in the initial sixteen measures, and while the pattern is given to change of one sort or another (including fragmentation, rhythmic manipulation and the like), its organizational role is unmistakable. The measured swell to the initial highpoint of the movement is compelling, as is the meditative final return of the primary melodic line in the violin—transformed as it is by all that has preceded it. The shift in tonal center late in the movement is something of a ruse: its turn to D is forward oriented, alluding to the key center of the finale; but D is generated on an upper partial of G, a secondary center of “Snow Ash,” representing the third of the more prominent E-flat sonority.
“Streams Ablaze” establishes a driving rhythmic pace from its initial measures where the unaccompanied violin line opens a four-octave zone that will be explored over the course of the movement. Melodic figures are constantly traded between violin and piano over much of the piece, with the initial tune recurring several times. Interplay between the two instruments reaches a hypnotic peak just before the midpoint, where a jazz/funk “conversation” transpires against the context of a modal center. That conversation intensifies until it ultimately ushers in two final statements of the head tune late in the movement, driving to a culmination that spins through seven octaves of the singleton pitch D.
Program Notes by Gregory Marion
Assistant Professor of Music Theory
The University of Saskatchewan
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Ching-chu Hu
