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Ruth Bakke - Tango del Corazón (2009)
(b. August 2nd 1947, Bergen)
First Performance: USF Verftet, Bergen, March 28th 2009
Oliver Schütz, violin
Jostein Stalheim, accordion
Peter Palotai, bass
Knut Christian Jansson, piano
Ruth Bakke was educated as an organist at the Bergen Music Conservatoire – now Grieg Academy.
She completed a 2 year music study at the University of Oslo in half a year (spring 1968) and then passed an exam as an organist at the Bergen Music Conservatoire in June 1968. She then travelled to the USA on a Fulbright scholarship. She obtained a bachelor degree from Texas Lutheran College and a master degree (with a double major: composition & organ) from Washington State University. In august 1972 she moved back to Bergen and became the organist and choir director at Storetveit Church, a position she held for 45 years. She also taught sporadically at the Bergen Music Conservatoire/Grieg Academy and at the Bergen Teachers' College (dept. of Music).
Bakke’s production includes orchestral and chamber music as well as many works for the organ and liturgical music, both vocal and instrumental. Her abilities as an improviser have seeped into her compositions, which often display seemingly intuitive elements and a keen ear for tonal colour within a clearly ordered framework. This is very obvious in the myriad registrations and nuances found in her fascinating music for the organ. In later works she has explored the possibilities of whole-tone structures from a very personal angle.
Bakke’s music seems to be in search of a spiritual dimension and is often contemplative in mood. However, it can also embrace humour, albeit usually of a somewhat arcane character. An apt example is her sextet “Des Kaisers neue Kleider” which is a very elaborate musical joke, but the music is purposely devoid of any externally “funny” aspects. Her work “Pano-Piano (25 Small Piano Pieces)” is a collection of miniatures written for young players. They include graphic scores, motifs and tone-rows intended to be developed by the players as well as simple two-part pieces in a free-tonal language and a piece for prepared piano. Young pianists enjoy playing them, as they awaken their creativity.
Her orchestra work “Lone Star Memories” was a commission from the Mid-Texas Symphony Orchestra for their bi-centennial season.
Bakke has also worked within the electronic and electro-acoustic media. She premiered her newest multi-media work “De Composition” at the Borealis Festival in 2021 in cooperation with the video artist Anne Marthe Dyvi.
Bakke wrote Tango del Corazón (Tango of – or from – the Heart) for a specific concert that took place during the 2009 edition of the Borealis Festival in Bergen. The concert was presented by Avgarde, the composer-driven concert series that had begun three years earlier. The show went by the name “Tangarde”. It included several new compositions in Tango style by Bergen-based composers, tangos for piano by Michael Finnissy and an all-inclusive milonga at the end.
Tango del Corazón is written in a readily recognizable Tango style. Although Bakke’s personal language – here imbued with her, at the time of writing it, keen interest in whole-tone structures – is starkly present, the music elegantly and effortlessly captures the spirit of the genre. No attempt is made at stylization, cleverness or ironic parody.
All tango music has an overtone of hopelessness. It is assumed that the desire implied in the dance’s sensuousness is never consummated. As in all the plaintive folk musics of the world, such as Blues or Cante Jondo, the boy doesn’t get the girl, or vice versa.
Although there is no overt sense of self-pity in Bakke’s tango, there is, all the same, a tenuous, underlying feeling of despondency. The work can be seen as a conversation between the violin and the accordion. Although both occupy centre stage for extended periods, somehow the accordion comes across as the dominant character. The bass confines itself largely to its traditional role, while the piano alternates between observation or support and occasional comments on the ongoing discourse. The long melodic lines create a sense of narrative. A literal return of the opening material occurs in the piece’s second half (measure 87 and ff.). This seems to suggest that a wrapping up of the affairs or an agreement may be available for the two main factions. Instead, the music ends with a heavy cascade of chromatic scales, which end abruptly before the final common flourish. Rather than offering a conclusion, this final gesture gives the impression of a door being unceremoniously slammed.
Ricardo Odriozola, 16. August 2024
German preface not available
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