Jacaranda Music

The third of 16 planned concerts and four events, Perilous Balance sees three young composers respond to Arnold Schoenberg’s groundbreaking Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11 with three brand new compositions. Also premiering is Peter Knell’s orchestral synthesis of ARKHIPOV, his gripping two-act opera depicting a Soviet submarine run amok. Among its musical arsenal, Arkhipov Synthesis uses a key technique invented by Schoenberg. Additionally, Tomas Peire Serrate's Awake reconsiders Schoenberg’s famous “Pierrot ensemble” with a fresh approach.

The music of Jacaranda’s Perilous Balance explores inflection points in musical, human, and political consciousness. As the exuberant ripeness of Austrian culture gave way in 1909 to foreboding symptoms of a coming war, Arnold Schoenberg began to abandon tonal music’s grip on consciousness. Three Jewish composers—David Serkin Ludwig, Inna Faliks, and Alex Weiser—are fascinated by this profoundly important moment and seek to shed light on its significance today with three new solo piano works. David Serkin Ludwig, Dean of Composition at The Juilliard School, has received many prizes and prestigious commissions. Pulitzer Prize finalist Alex Weiser is Program Director of YIVO at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan. Faliks is an international concert pianist of distinction who will perform Schoenberg’s Opus 11 and each response.

The concert’s second half begins with a mixed quintet (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and percussion) and ends with an 18-piece chamber orchestra work. Barcelona-born Serrate was profoundly influenced by Schoenberg’s landmark quintet Pierrot Lunaire. Alert with human wakefulness by substituting percussion for the piano in Schoenberg’s famous “Pierrot ensemble”, Awake (2013) is warmer, more delicate, and drenched in subtle colorations harkening to the French tradition of Debussy, Ravel, Messiaen, and Boulez.

A groundbreaking two-act opera by composer Peter Knell and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann, ARKHIPOV is based on the true story of the man who saved humanity from nuclear annihilation during a political and tactical tipping point in the Cuban Missile Crisis. For this program, Knell has extracted the 30-minute instrumental work Arkhipov Synthesis. Knell was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, BMI and ASCAP Young Composers Awards, a grant from Meet the Composer, and First Prizes from the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra 10th New Music Festival International Competition, the Indiana State University Contemporary Music Festival/Louisville Orchestra Prize, and the Omaha Symphony Guild International New Music Competition.