Classical and Modern Music
Format: CD
Code: 112348
EAN: 3838898112348
Foreign platforms:
Božidar Kos, distinguished composer, pedagogue and theorist, was born in 1934 in Novo mesto, Slovenia. He studied cello, piano, music theory and mechanical engineering in Slovenia and was active as a jazz player and arranger throughout Europe before moving to Australia in 1965. He studied composition with Richard Meale at the University of Adelaide. In Darmstadt, Germany he attended composition and analysis classes by
Gyorgy Ligeti, Brian Ferneyhough, and Mauricio Kagel.
After teaching at the Torrens College of Advanced education (1975) and the University of Adelaide (1976 – 1983) he was invited to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where he became Chair of the Composition and Music Technology Unit. Work at that institution soon placed him among most distinguished Australian composers and pedagogues in the area of Pacific as well as in the world. He retired from the Sydney Conservatorium in 2002 and is now devoting all his time to
composition. Since 2008 he resides in Slovenia.
Taking the music of the European avantgarde as a seminal influence, Kos established a style of carefully crafted, harmonically sensitive complexity. Working predominantly in orchestral and chamber music genres, Kos composes music that investigates relationships between musical space, harmony, timbre and texture. He has been writing works based on harmonic and sub-harmonic spectra that incorporate microtones of diverse sizes.
Kos has earned a number of important prizes, grants and awards, among them The Adolf Spivakovsky Scholarship for Composition in 1977, the Albert H. Maggs Composition Award in 1983, third prize at the XXIV Premio Musicale Citta di Trieste competition in 1987 for his Violin Concerto, which also received in 1991 three Sounds Australian National Music Critics’ Awards, including ‘Best Australian Orchestral Work’ and ‘Best Musical Work Written by a Composer Resident in New South
Wales’. His composition Aurora Australis represented Australia at ISCM World Music Days 2000 in Luxembourg. In 2003 he was elected corresponding member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and in 2009 became its full member. In 2004 he received the Classical Music Award for “Long-term Contribution to the Advancement of Australian Music”.
Kos has been active in many areas related to composition in Australia and Europe. He introduced his work at the Darmstadt international course for new music. Some of his additional teaching engagements included the Summer School for Young Australian and New Zealand Composers (1983), National Orchestral Composers’ School (1992), Visiting Professor at the Music Academy in Ljubljana, Slovenia (1995), and as the mentor for participants of the Australian Composers Orchestral Forum
(1999). In 1988 he was invited to deliver paper on his own compositional techniques, entitled In Search of Perceptible Harmonic Organisation, at the Symposium of International Musicological Society. In 1991 he was invited as a guest of honour to the First International Slovenian Congress in Ljubljana, Slovenia. For many years Kos was also a member of the committee of the International Society for Contemporary Music, Australia Section, and of the executive
committee of the Fellowship of Australian Composers.
His music has been commissioned and/or performed and recorded by a variety of renowned soloists, ensembles and orchestras: Dene Olding, Keith Humble, Daniel Herscovitch, Georg Pedersen, Geoffrey Morris, John Hoffman, Graeme Lyall, Du Ning-Wu, Sally Ann Mays, Wolfram Christ, Monika Skalar, Aleksander Milošev, Bojan Gorišek, Tomaž Rajterič, Petar Ugrin, Milko Lazar, Milan Hudnik, Jaka Stadler, Symeron Ensemble, Petra String Quartet, Sydney Alpha Ensemble,
Australia Ensemble, The Seymour Group, Flederman Quartet, Pipeline, Offspring Ensemble, Australian Contemporary Music Ensemble, Synergy Percussion, The Greenway Group, Goossens Ensemble, The Australian Contemporary Players, Slowind Ensemble, Lontano Ensemble, Concorde Ensemble, Arditti String Quartet, Kiev Percussion, Studio za tolkala, Tambuco percussion ensemble, Ensemble Slavko Osterc, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Brisbane Symphony Orchestra, Sydney
Conservatorium Symphony Orchestra, Elder Conservatorium Symphony, Symphony Orchestra RTV Slovenia, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken, and The Slovenian Philharmonic
AURORA AUSTRALIS
Aurora australis or southern lights is a luminous, quivering glow, seen at night in the sky in southern latitudes. It appears in various forms but mostly as waves and folds or shimmering curtains of coloured light. Rapidly shifting patches and dancing columns of light of various hues can be seen high in the atmosphere with a dark segment of the sky lying beneath them.
Aurora is also a Latin word for the dawn, for the daybreak, for the first appearance of the daylight. In a figurative sense it can mean then the beginning or the first appearance of something. We often speak of ‘the dawn of civilisation’ or ‘the dawn of a new era’, etc. The word ‘aurora’ can be used thus as a metaphor for the beginning of something that will happen in the future, of something yet unknown and mysterious, as, for example, the ‘dawn’ or ‘dawning of a new millennium’.
The piece Aurora Australis is not a programmatic piece, yet its structure is reminiscent of the atmospheric phenomenon. The form is unfolding in waves and the orchestral colours are constantly changing. High woodwind instruments play most of the time quasi shimmering, sparkling textures while the percussion instruments sometimes play dance-like rhythms very softly, suggesting that the percussion sounds are originating somewhere far away in the distance. Bassoons, contrabassoon and tuba play,
particularly during the first part of the composition, low, slow moving melodic lines, implying the dark side of the sound spectrum. Composition is based on the harmonic and subharmonic spectrum and, consequently, many pitches differ from the traditional tempered chromatic tunning for approximately a sixth of a tone and sometimes also for a quarter of a tone.
Aurora Australis was commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation with the financial assistance from the Performing Arts Board of the Australia Council.
B.K.
SYMPHONY No.1
(In memoriam cara Milana)
Symphony, with dedication In memoriam cara Milana, was written in memory of my late wife. This is a single movement composition that consists of many interconnected segments. The basic musical material consists of nine short melodic fragments that are during the process of composition gradually introduced into various textures and consequently undergone perpetual transformations. The total musical material is thus transformed from segment to segment. These melodic
fragments are derived by a special process from a short poem of nine lines in which I tried to express Milana’s importance in my life. Composition concludes with a section in which the orchestral strings play in a slow tempo all nine melodies in their original forms. Accompaniment, played always in a very high tessitura, consists of piano, harp and glockenspiel, or sometimes flutes. Melodic statements, played by strings, are here separated by short episodes, each consisting of different
material that had been previously developed during the process of composition. The structure of this final section is in some way reminiscent of the traditional extended Coda.
B.K.
SYMPHONY NO. 2
(The Symphony Of Two Continents)
Symphony No. 2, although written as a single continuous piece of music, is divided into two distinct parts, each consisting of a number of connected segments. First part I started to write in Australia at the time, when I was already preparing for my return to Slovenia and as a result had also mixed feelings about that decision: from excitement and happiness, that I was finally returning to my homeland, to sadness because I was leaving the country, where I lived for
43 years and where I realised most of my youthful dreams. In between there were also many sensations of apprehension, uncertainty and uneasiness related to not knowing what was all waiting for me on my return to Europe. After some time I had to interrupt my work on the symphony – firstly for the medical reasons and then because of the packing and moving. Approximately seven months had past before I had finally settled in my new home in Slovenia and could start working again on the second part
of the Symphony. Then I started to be subjected to strange things. In the middle of compos- ing I was getting sudden, short but very realistic flashbacks from my life in Australia. I was instantaneously transplanted into some moments that I had spent on that continent, as if my mind or sub- consciousness could not cope with my return to Europe and was projecting images of what I had left behind. That was happening until I finished composing the symphony.
First part of the composition is therefore coloured with feelings of agitation, uncertainty, uneasiness and sadness, and at the same time also excitement and happiness. My thoughts were at that time preoccupied with my departure to Europe.
However, during the work on the second part of the symphony I was overwhelmed with memories of my life in Australia. That part begins with a gradual introduction of a short melody by the horn and the trumpet, but is soon taken over by other instrumental groups as well and establishes itself as the main material of the second part of the symphony. It appears in various transformations until the end of the composition and thus gives this part of the symphony its character and stability.
Symphony No. 2 was commissioned by the Radio and Television (RTV) Slovenia.
B.K.
PRESS REVIEWS
SYMPHONY NO.2
Kos’s Symphony No. 2 follows Messianes’s spiritual heritage, it is built kaleidoscopically with complete mastery of the technique, strict but wonderfully imaginative and sonorous.
(Jure Dobovišek, Delo, Wednesday, 25 November 2009)
The relic of melody and rhythm is shaped rather differently in Božidar Kos’s Symphony No. 2, which was, also regarding the interpretation, the brightest part of the evening. Once again we witnessed such composer’s abilities as holding the harmonious balance between the sound space and the orchestral timbres. In the piece of glowing unified material, the pulse skillfully interweaves with the texture, the episodes of the percussionists defy self-sufficency, and the
musical flow grows into a branched structure. Božidar Kos created a masterpiece of powerful expression, a real Promethean distribution of musical radiation.
(Primož Trdan, Dnevnik, Friday, 27 November 2009)
SYMPHONY (NO.1)
The first piece of the evening, Kos’s Symphony, also gave me the greatest satisfac- tion. Kos is known as a distinct modernist; nevertheless, in his Symphony – even the title clearly alludes to traditional models – the strict edges of modernism are loosened into almost mesmerizing modal timbres, which give a taste of Messiaen. Kos proved to be a master of the orchestra and a great architect of a symphonic structure – the calm expressiveness could be related with the
commemorative character of the piece and the melancholy of the coming fall. Only a great master can create such an atmosphere through music.
(Gregor Pompe, Dnevnik, Monday, 24 September 2007)
Kos’s Symphony is a great work. Starting off with a calm hint of a melodic pattern, it continues in an accelerated tempo before turning serious, emotional, sensible. The melodic patterns, lying on a broad basis, change the view of the rhythmic vastness. The music, which was written in memory of the composer’s wife, is built out of nine melodies, but this is just his writing concept. The thing that attracts and slowly but firmly convinces the listener is the inner tie,
linking, following a single idea. In its basis, Kos’s Symphony is pure music, gathering its powers at first, to use them as an offering in the conclusion.
(Pavel Mihelčič, Delo, Monday, 24 September 2007)
AURORA AUSTRALIS
What a piece by Božidar Kos! It was not the first time we could hear his music in Slovenia, we have always been looking forward to it, but this Aurora Australis whirled and seduced us beyond rational, so, it is a thrilling masterpiece. … No doubt, Božidar Kos is one the most musical and fresh composers in the world today, capable of wittily combining different styles into a harmonization, which is both wonderfully fun and strikingly meaningful.
(Peter Kušar, Dnevnik, May 1998)
Aurora Australis by Slovenian-born and Australian-based Bozidar Kos was a pic- torial, almost impressionistic work with elaborate orchestration, featuring an assortment of delicate textures and refined sound effects..........the orchestral writing in the work was extremely imaginative and delightful.
(Anton Rovner: World Music days 2000, Musica-Ukrainica, Odessa)
COMPOSITIONS:
1. AURORA AUSTRALIS 14.47 (listen!)
The Slovenian Philharmonic orchestra
Conductor: Marko Letonja
2. SYMPHONY NO.1 26.10
In Memoriam Cara Milana
RTV Slovenija Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: En Shao
3. SYMPHONY NO.2 25.02
The Symphony of Two Continents
RTV Slovenija Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: En Shao
