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To hear more recordings of recent works, please visit: www.soundcloud.com/dalitwarshaw

ORCHESTRAL AND CHORAL EXCERPTS:

Conjuring Tristan for piano and orchestra (2015)

Dalit Warshaw, piano.

Composer’s note: I call Conjuring Tristan a “narrative concerto for piano and orchestra.” It is based upon Thomas Mann’s novella “Tristan,” in which Mann’s familiar theme of the irreconcilable dichotomy between Life and Art is revisited through the character of Gabriele, a young mother and former pianist in treatment for consumption at the sanatorium of Einfried. A writer and fellow resident named Spinell reignites her artistic spirit and encourages her to play through Wagner’s opera “Tristan und Isolde,” a transformative “wonder-realm” of experience for both. After a confrontation between writer and husband, Kloterjahn, Gabriele dies. The piece incorporates heavily the leitmotifs of Wagner (notably in the cadenza, as the piano/protagonist plays a fantasy on the themes of Tristan und Isolde, corresponding to the climactic moment in Mann’s story).

 

After the Victory for young people’s chorus (SSAB) and orchestra (2006)

III. “The Nation”  

Text: Song of Deborah
Translation: Hilan Warshaw

Composer’s note: The Song of Deborah is, on the outset, an optimistic, epic-style tale of unexpected victory against evil oppressors. Deborah is Israel’s first woman judge and military leader, during a time when the Israelites were enduring persecution from the tyrannical Caananites. Urging her people to rise up and fight back, she sits by the side of her general, Barak, as he charges into battle. The Caananites disperse out of fear, their general, Sisera, brutally murdered, and the oppressed victorious. Another female character, however, casts a shadow on the story’s seemingly black-and-white aspect: Sisera’s mother, who peers through her window at the expanse of desert, wondering why her son’s chariot is slow to return home. This new (generally overlooked) human element offered another aspect to Deborah’s tale: What of the experience of the “vanquished”? Surely they experienced the very same events in a much different way than did the Israelites!

I thus depict the text from three different vantage points: the voice of Deborah, who sings a proud and gleeful song of victory; the more savage voice of the nation, which depicts the battle scene; and the voice of Sisera’s mother and the defeated Canaanite army, who sing a dirge for the dead. The same text is employed through the depiction of each voice, the music serving as the means to instill the words with the specific emotions necessary. The ultimate message is perhaps optimistic, but one that also reflects the grim reality of war: there are two sides to every story, and one nation’s liberation is the other’s suffering, one’s song of victory the other’s lament.

www.soundcloud.com/dalitwarshaw/after-the-victory-for-childrens-chorus-and-orchestra

After the Victory for young people’s chorus (SSAB) and orchestra (2006)

IV. “Sisera’s Mother”

Text: Song of Deborah
Translation: Hilan Warshaw

www.soundcloud.com/dalitwarshaw/after-the-victory-iv-siseras-mother

SELECTED PIANO WORKS (all performances by Dalit Warshaw):

Responses for solo piano (2013)

A set of three intermezzi written as complements to three Intermezzi of Brahms

I. … Op. 119, no.1
II. … Op. 116, no. 5
III. … Op. 76, no. 3

Composer’s note: Responses is a set of three intermezzi written as complements to three Intermezzi of Brahms (Op. 119 no. 1, Op. 116 no. 5 and Op. 76 no. 3). As early as I can remember, I have gravitated toward the piano music of Brahms, and the act of playing through his Intermezzi during intense periods of writing always provided me both emotional fulfillment and compositional guidance. Each “Response” capitalizes upon selected characteristics from the original intermezzo. The “slow tears” of Op. 119 no. 1, for example, becomes an avalanche, the three-sixteenth-note motive of the middle section transformed into a bird call, the final prolonged unfolding of the original B minor tonic leading to an abrupt surprise resolution. Op. 116 no. 5 struck me as a fairytale gone awry, its persistent heartbeat-like main rhythmic motive somewhat relentless, its eighth-note rests stark and alarming: I therefore enhanced its ominous quality by adding rhythmic irregularity and using registral extremes to create a demonic danse macabre. As in the original intermezzo, after a vulnerable and plaintive middle section, the original material returns on a false tonic. The final “Response”is an homage to Op. 76 no. 3, whose pp arpeggios on an Ab pedal tone suggested to me an eerie transparency and nostalgic clanging of bells, and the potential for a temporal expansiveness.

http://soundcloud.com/dalitwarshaw/responses-2013

First Love Song for solo piano (2013)

www.soundcloud.com/dalitwarshaw/first-love-song-2013

Winter Dream (in memoriam Charlotte Salomon) for solo piano (2016)

Composer’s note: Born in Berlin in 1917 as the only daughter of a prominent Jewish surgeon, Charlotte Salomon was a young and talented German-Jewish painter who, at age 22, escaped Nazi Germany with her grandparents to live in hiding in the still-unoccupied French Riviera. In order to maintain sanity within increasingly insane circumstances, she painted within the span of two years a 769-canvas Gesamtkunstwerk narrating her life’s story, shaped as a Singspiel (complete with cast of characters, three acts, a prologue and epilogue) entitled “Life, or Theater?” Text was included in transparent overlays fit over each painting, along with cues for musical excerpts by Bach, Schubert and Bizet, as well as other composers and various tunes popular at the time. At age 26, Charlotte was eventually discovered by the Nazis and sent to the gas chambers of Auschwitz, five months pregnant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEdKoJP3o3M

SELECTED RADIO INTERVIEWS AND PODCASTS:

Feature on the Corporation of Yaddo’s podcast “Shadow//Yaddo,” hosted by Elaina Richardson. Episode 6: “Reality Dreams” (2020)

The brilliant Amitava Kumar (“Immigrant, Montana”) talks with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and novelist Ayad Akhtar, whose new novel “Homeland Elegies” is sweeping the “best books of the year” lists. Internationally acclaimed composer Dalit Warshaw shares music and her thoughts on how the Theremin—an electronic instrument invented by a Russian physicist and KGB operative—helped her embrace possibility. Contributing Artists: John Kelly and Joseph Keckler.

https://www.yaddo.org/episode-6-reality-dreams/

Dalit Warshaw on “Sirens” Concerto – WMHT FM (2019)

This interview, hosted by Rob Brown, was aired prior to the New York premiere of Sirens: A Concerto for Theremin and Orchestra by the Albany Symphony, conducted by David Alan Miller and featuring Carolina Eyck as soloist.

wmht.org/blogs/classical/dalit-warshaw-on-sirens-concerto/

Interview with Blue Lake Public Radio (2015)

This interview, hosted by Bonnie Bierma, was aired during the week of the world premiere performances of my piano concerto, “Conjuring Tristan,” by the Grand Rapids Symphony on Jan. 30, 2015, conducted by David Lockington and featuring myself as piano soloist.

www.soundcloud.com/dalitwarshaw/interview-with-blue-lake-public-radio-mi

To hear recordings of theremin performances and original works, please visit this website’s Theremin Performance page.