Annual American Composers Update
Ursula Mamlock
"Perhaps the most eventful day of the past season was
the concert given for me by the organization Musica Reanimata
in the city of my birth, Berlin. (These concerts, given
every year, are arranged for those Jewish composers who
were forced to flee from the Nazis during the years 1933-45.)
The hall was filled with a most interested audience. A
friendly interviewer, Gottfried Eberle, gave me the opportunity
to talk about my life, the childhood years, the constant
anxiety knowing that a normal life could not be expected.
But contrary to what other Jewish children had to learn
to cope, I always composed and was one of the fortunate
ones who was able to leave Germany in 1939, first to Ecuador,
then, through my compositions, to New York. The music,
performed by excellent musicians, ranged from early songs
and piano pieces to more complex chamber music." In addition
to the concert, interviews with Ursula Mamlok* and broadcasts
of her music were aired by Radio Köln in Berlin and
Bern. Mamlok's publishers are
C.
F. Peters, McGinnis and Marx, and Casia Publishing
Co. She holds commissions from Marcia Eckert and Sarah
Cahill for
2000 Notes, for piano; and from Continuum
for a work for clarinet, piano, violin, and cello.
Premieres
Daybreak (text by H. Wadsworth Longfellow), for
mezzo-soprano and piano, was sung first by Verena Rein,
accompanied by Udo Agnesens, Feb. 29, 2000 at the Konzerthaus
am Gendarmenmarkt, in Berlin.
Performances
At the same program, other works heard were
Grasshoppers,
for piano;
Four German Songs (text from Hermann
Hesse's
Vom Baum des Lebens);
Panta Rhei,
for violin, cello, and piano; and
Polarities, for
flute, violin, cello, and piano, with Rein, Agnesens,
and Modern Art Sextet members Yoriko Ikeya, piano; Klaus
Schöpp, flute; Matthias Leupold, violin; and Matias
de Oliveira Pinto, cello. Soprano Lucy Shelton sang
Haiku
Settings, Feb. 10, 2000 in Cologne, Germany. In 2000,
Paul Bowman played
Five Intermezzi for Guitar at
the Speigellustturm, in Marburg, Germany, Mar. 3; and
in Darmstadt, Germany, Mar. 18.
String Quartet No.
2 had 2000 performances with the Aurora String Quartet,
at the Old First Church in San Francisco, CA, Apr. 30;
with the Long Island String Quartet, at the First Presbyterian
Church in Port Jefferson, NY, June 3; and with Poné
Ensemble members Carole Cowan, Emily Faxon, Valentina
Charlap, and Susan Seligman, at New Paltz (NY) methodist
Church, Sept. 22. A Speculum Musicae program at Christ
and St. Stephen's Church, New York, NY, included
Rhapsody,
for clarinet, viola, and piano, June 9, 2000.
Publications
Variations for Solo Flute (6'); McGinnis and Marx.
Further Information
