Guest Ensemble Recital
Moonlight Wind
Sunday March 3, 2024 at 4pm
First Church Boston
Elena Ruehr Jane Wang Considers the Dragonfly (2009)
Marti Epstein Nachtvoll (2014)
Toru Takemitsu And then I knew ‘twas Wind (1992)
Elena Ruehr Trois Gymnopédies (2020) (world premiere)
Claude Debussy Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp (1915)
TriChrome
Vanessa Holroyd, flute
Daniel Doña, viola
Franziska Huhn, harp
Claude Debussy established a new genre when he composed his Sonata for flute, viola, and harp in 1915. Many composers since then have taken to the unique combination of colors offered by this instrumentation . Toru Takemitsu’s And then I knew ‘twas Wind, inspired by Debussy and Emily Dickinson, has as its subject, according to the composer, “the signs of the wind in the natural world and of the soul, or unconscious mind (or we could even call it ‘dream’), which continues to blow, like the wind, invisibly, through human consciousness.” Boston-based composer Marti Epstein counts Takemitsu as one of her major influences and her Nachtvoll written in 2014 evokes the natural world through a different lens. Elena Ruehr’s Trois Gymnopedies was written for TriChrome during the pandemic in 2020 and is finally receiving its world premiere on this program. The work is inspired by Satie and Debussy and, according to the composer, “harken back to my childhood when I lived on the edge of a great forest near the shores of Lake Superior in Michigan.”
