#leontheremin — Public Fediverse posts

Lera Auerbach: ‘I love the other-worldly sound of the theremin’.

The theremin is an electronic instrument that is played without physical contact. Because of its eerie sound it is often used in soundtracks for horror movies. But classical composer Lera Auerbach also regularly writes for it. Between 1999 and 2017 she composed Ten Preludes for Theremin and Piano. They were premiered in 2019 by Thorwald Jørgensen and pianist Kamilla Bystrova, who have now released them on CD.

In 2005 the Russian-American Lera Auerbach (Chelyabinsk, 1973) used a theremin in her ballet music for The Little Mermaid by choreographer John Neumeier. A year later the instrument resurfaced in her First Symphony and in the symphonic poem Icarus distilled from it. In 2011 she included it in her ballet music Cinderella. With her predilection for the theremin, Auerbach is an exception among her fellow composers.

Auerbach doesn’t remember the exact time and place when she first heard a theremin. ‘Leon Theremin developed this instrument shortly after the First World War. It is the first fully electronic instrument in the world and I have heard recordings both of Theremin himself and the famous thereminist Clara Rockmore. I was immediately captivated by the other-worldly quality of its expression, and the beauty of the human body interacting with a magnetic field to produce sound.’

Although she is not only a composer but also a pianist, Auerbach never considered learning to play the theremin herself. ‘I like to leave that to professionals, but I chose to use it for the first time in my ballet music for The Little Mermaid in 2005. In this fairy-tale by Hans Christian Andersen the mermaid has the most beautiful voice and I was looking for a way to represent it best.’

Almost as a matter of course her choice fell upon the theremin. ‘I was fascinated by its mystical sound and the somewhat magical way in which the instrument is played. It consists of only two antennas connected to oscillators. The player never touches it, but plucks the sounds out of nowhere, as it were, by moving his or her arms. One hand controls the pitch, the other the volume. Wonderful how the instrument is played through the air and music is created by manipulation of electromagnetic fields. I found the transcendental quality of sound perfect to interpret the voice of the mermaid.’

Because of its expressiveness, she then used the instrument in other pieces as well. Contrary to what one might expect, it is not difficult to write for theremin, says Auerbach: ‘I do not approach the instrument other than a human voice or a wind instrument and use standard notation.’

She finished composing Ten Preludes for Theremin and Piano in 2017. Two years later Jørgensen premiered them with Kamilla Bystrova at the Livorno Festival in Italy. Since then they have performed the cycle many times all over the world, and have now included it on their CD Air électrique.

Yet Auerbach did not necessarily write her cycle with Jørgensen in mind, she says. ‘The occasion was a meeting with Viviana Ramos in Cuba, who is very interested in electro-acoustic music. She is involved in the Laboratorio Nacional de Música Electroacústica in Havana. In recent years she has invited foreign thereminists to perform there. I decided to create the Ten Preludes for one of her projects. Thorwald is the first one to  perform them in full and also the first to record them. He also played them in Cuba.’

They first met in person in 2016, when Jørgensen performed Icarus with the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. A pleasure, as it turned out. Auerbach: ‘Thorwald has performed many of my pieces over the years and I greatly appreciate his craftsmanship. Few musicians fully master the theremin and Thorwald is one of the world’s best. Afterwards he had many questions. This was wonderful, and enlightening for myself as well.’

In the future she hopes to expand her cycle to 24 Preludes, as she previously did for piano solo; violin and piano; viola and piano and the combination of cello and piano. What is her fascination with preludes? Large-scale works such as 72 Angels for choir and saxophone quartet and Goetia 72 for choir and string quartet also consist of a cycle of as many preludes. The first on the names of angels, the second on those of devils. Is there also a story behind the Ten preludes for Theremin and Piano? ‘No’, Auerbach laughs, ‘these are purely abstract’.

I played two preludes in An Ox on the Roof Concertzender in February 2020.

The above is an adaptation of an article I wrote for the Dutch music magazine Luister.

#KamillaBystrova #LeonTheremin #LeraAuerbach #TenPreludesForThereminAndPiano #ThowaldJorgensen