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- Nicola LeFanu
After Farrera (2023)
- Peters Edition Limited (World)
Commissioned by Ben Goldscheider and At The World’s Edge Festival with funding from Vaughan Williams Foundation
Premiered by The Goldscheider Trio at The Lammermuir Festival on 14 September 2023. Second performance: Ben Goldscheider, Alice Neary and Benjamin Baker playing on 12 October 2023 at The Cloudy Bay Shed, Cromwell as part of At The World's Edge Festival 2023.
Programme Note
After Farrera for horn, violin and cello.
My trio is named for a village high in the Catalan Pyrenees; over the years I have made a composing retreat at Farrera’s Centre D’Art I Natura. It is a wonderful location, in an expansive landscape that is perhaps reflected in my short trio. The trio is a fantasia lasting around twelve minutes. Much of the surface of the music is fast, bold and active; but it is underpinned by slower moving harmonies, often held by the strings in a recurrent, chorale- like texture. Shadows in the harmony are created by natural harmonics and microtones. As in my solo horn piece After Lindisfarne, I have delighted in exploring the horn’s beautiful tone colour and its capacity for timbral variation. This is very apparent towards the end, when the horn’s melodic line suggests a lullaby, coloured by simple inflections.
The trio was commissioned by Ben Goldscheider and is dedicated to him, in admiration of his playing.
The premiere will be given at the Lammermuir Festival, September 14th 2023, by Ben Goldscheider and members of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective. Funds for the commission were provided by the Vaughan Williams Foundation and by the co-commissioner, At the World’s Edge Festival, New Zealand.
Reviews
Inspired by a composing retreat situated in the Spanish village of the title, this colourful fantasia conjured up the bustle of a busy tourist attraction in the confident, florid lines of the main sections, while capturing something of the area’s vast, spacious landscapes in the quieter, more sparsely scored passages. The players were sensitive to the music’s ever-shifting moods, especially in the gently soothing, berceuse-like final section. Subtly scored, with effective use of natural harmonics and microtones, ‘After Ferrara’ offered ear-catching expressive techniques within the context of a compelling, overarching musical argument. This trio is a welcome, highly individual addition to the repertoire.
"Goldscheider brought to AWE his recently commissioned trio from senior British composer Nicola LeFanu, After Farrera, named for a village high in the Catalan Pyrenees where the composer had been in retreat. Played by violinist Vesa-Matti Leppänen, UK cellist Alice Neary and Goldscheider on horn, After Farrera is beautifully crafted with a wide expressive and timbral range, setting up a dialogue between horn and strings as two musical characters, solitary and populous."