Fulbright Grant Award Ceremony17 May 2010

Säätytalo, House of the Estates, Helsinki, Finland

To honor the Finnish Fulbright Center Grantees for 2010-2011

Commencing 17.00

Remarks

Petri Tuomi-Nikula, Director General, Department for Communication and Culture,

Ministry for Foreign Affairs

Pertti Salolainen, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Parliament of Finland

Bruce J. Oreck, U.S. Ambassador to Finland

Musical Performance of Solo ClarinetMelanie Lahti, 2009-2010 American Fulbright Grantee

Terhi Mölsä, Executive Director, Fulbright Center

Awarding of Grant Certificates

Closing

Reception to follow

Notes on the Musical Performance

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Hommage à Manuel de Falla (1994)Béla Kovács (b. 1937)

In 1994 Hungarian clarinetist Béla Kovács published a collection of pieces for solo clarinet emulating the styles of composers from Johann Sebastian Bach to Aram Khatschaturian. Clarinet players often study this collection of “hommages” for di-dactic purposes, but over the past decade several of these works have been widely performed and recorded as concert pieces. Perhaps the most captivating of the col-lection is the Hommage to Spanish composer Manuel de Falla (1876-1946). True to de Falla’s compositional style, Kovács’s hommage features the clarinet player’s vir-tuosity with a number of free, cadenza-like episodes set off by themes with strong, pulsating rhythmic profiles. The piece begins with an aggressive call to attention immediately followed by a playful response contrasting in register and style. This sets a tone of push-and-pull that is consistent throughout the piece, as Kovács de-

mands the performer to wield a combination of wit, strength, and grace.

Cinco Bocetos (1984), 2 Canción del campo Roberto Sierra (b. 1953)

American composer Roberto Sierra hails from Puerto Rico and is currently a mem-ber of the Composition Faculty at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The five-movement work Cinco Bocetos (Five Sketches) seamlessly integrates several com-positional idioms to create a cohesive concert piece rich in depth and variety. The Canción del campo (Song of the Countryside) presents a simple “theme” rendered not-so-simple by accented punctuations characterized by swift registral shifts. The affect of simplicity is restored (briefly) by a second theme performed in the lower, dulcet, chalumeau register of the clarinet. Throughout the movement Sierra defies the listener’s expectations using rhythmic play and unpredictable combinations of his two “themes.” The movement’s opening ostinato figure features a harmonic pro-file reminiscent of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, and the recurrence of this os-tinato suggests its ever-presence, as if it began long before it first sounded and will

continue long after the conclusion of the movement.