FULL Wing on Wing (Salonen) Hamburg 2022 Piia Komsi Anu Komsi

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: Wing on Wing  
• Composer: Salonen Esa-Pekka   
• Libretto:
• Venue & Opera Company: Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg, Germany  
• Recorded: January 11, 2022
• Type: Concert Live
• Singers: Piia Komsi, Anu Komsi
• Conductor: Alan Gilbert  
• Orchestra: NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester  
• Stage Director:   
• Costume Designer:   

Information about the Recording

• Format: Streaming
• Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
• Subtitles: nosubs  

• ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

  Programme :
  
  Tromba lontana de John Adams
  Concerto pour piano de Thomas Adès
  Wing on Wing de Esa-Pekka Salonen

  Salonen: ‘In sailing terminology, when a sailboat opens both the foresail and the main sail to a 180-degree angle to produce the maximum amount of sail area, the beautiful sculptural constellation is called ‘wing on wing’. Frank Gehry uses that as a metaphor for the view of Walt Disney Concert Hall from the corner of Grand Avenue and First Street. My composition Wing on Wing is, of course, not an attempt to translate architecture into music, which would be an impossible task anyway. Nor is it a musical portrait of Frank Gehry, but rather an homage to an extraordinary building by an extraordinary man. At the same time it celebrates the efforts of every man and woman whose dedication, skill, and faith made a fantastic vision into reality. Wing on Wing uses metaphors of water and wind. I also decided to use the weird sound of a fish from the local waters of Southern California, the Plainfin Midshipman, as an instrument. (A school of fish uses this sound probably as a means of staying in formation.) Fish, of course, was Gehry’s unexpected move in the post-modern game of architecture. The image is beautiful, perfect, and yet completely surprising in the context of intellectual discourse. We hear Gehry’s sampled (and modified) voice here and there. Sometimes we can discern words, key words in his work and life. Sometimes words become musical sounds, and they lose their intelligibility wholly or partially. There are some other unusual colours in the score: two coloratura sopranos join the orchestra sometimes as soloists, sometimes as instruments among others. In the beginning of the piece I pair them with the lowest-sounding woodwind instruments, the contrabassoon and the contrabass clarinet, and create a new kind of hybrid instrument, a sci-fi fantasy of a union between humans and machines. I decided to disperse some of the sounds in the auditorium. The sopranos, some percussion, and the sampled sounds travel to different parts of the hall.

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