Elena Kats-Chernin - Clocks

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Elena Kats-Chernin - Clocks

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Elena Kats-Chernin is not only one of the most prolific, but also one of most distinctive voices in Australian music.

Cadences, Deviations and Scarlatti was inspired by Domenico Scarlatti’s D minor sonata, K.141, an extremely challenging piece which Kats-Chernin had come to know through performances in Germany by the virtuoso accordion player Elsbeth Moser. ‘It had a sense of infinity, and alongside its tension it gave me a sense of optimism, despite its minor tonality.’ Returning to the piece to create her own musical response, Kats-Chernin decided to work not from the printed score, but from what she remembered; the result is a sort of ‘Fantasia on recollections of a Scarlatti Sonata’.

Purple Prelude was born when Kats-Chernin and the young pianist Tamara Anna Cislowska were discussing a shared enthusiasm for Rachmaninoff. A sinuous, distinctly Russian melody (not terribly Rachmaninoff-like) started to implant itself in Kats-Chernin’s head: the title, with its allusion to ‘purple patches’, suggests this ‘going off at a tangent’.

The Concertino for solo violin and 11 instruments had a long, almost elephantine gestation period. Kats-Chernin remembers being inspired by Messiaen’s last work, Eclairs sur l’Au-delà. . . : She says, ‘the composition is based on two themes: the second arises from the extinction of the first, condensing and yet complicating things. Yet this piece does not depict anything, nor does it tell a story. It’s just about a third, a seventh, and the consequences.’

Kats-Chernin says that Variations in a Serious Black Dress was inspired by ‘a children’s book called Musical Harriet by Meredith Costain, about a little girl who desperately wants to learn to play the trombone, and wear a serious black dress on stage. Her strong and determined character impressed me so much that I decided to pay a tribute to her in this piece.’

Clocks was composed for 20 musicians and tape. In writing the work, Kats-Chernin was particularly attracted to two sounds: a hammer against a block of wood, and a double bass string struck with the wood of the bow: these became the core sounds of the tape part. But there were many others too: notably vocal sounds, flute sounds transposed down two octaves, and the sound of a ruined piano found in a neighbouring room. The prevailingly dark character of the piece partly reflects the idea of an ‘imaginary clock’ which beats through and beyond each human existence, but was also a response to seeing the location in which the first performance was going to take place: the ruins of a munitions factory in Karlsruhe, Germany, with broken windows, and dust everywhere.

Russian Rag was composed for a Donna Coleman album of piano ragtimes entitled Rags to Riches. Kats-Chernin subsequently made the present arrangement for the Sydney Alpha Ensemble. Russian Rag was for many years the theme music of the ABC Radio National program Late Night Live, and it featured as Max’s theme in the Adam Elliot film Mary and Max.