Immer Fliessender

Liza LIM
Born 1966, Perth, Australia

Immer Fliessender Ever Flowing (2004)

orchestra
Duration 8'30
Commissioned by Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Symphony Australia
A companion-piece for Mahler's Ninth Symphony

Gianluigi Gelmetti made the intriguing request to me to write a `prologue´ to Mahler's Ninth, a work often described as one of the pinnacles of late-Romantic Austro-Germanic culture. Mahler's symphonies are like gigantic, all-encompassing universes in musical form. His artistic philosophy was to find expression for every facet of life from tender evocations of childhood and bucolic nature to emotions of sardonic bitterness, rage and grief, as well as redemptive visions of heavenly realms.

Such a complete vision of course doesn't require any preface but I decided to base my own composition somehow on the act of looking or glancing at the Ninth Symphony as if through a window. Inside this window is the glittering world of Viennese empire. I imagined glimpsing mirrored surfaces that somehow catch some images from outside that window, from the Islamic culture of the Ottoman Empire, `just across the border´.

`Immer Fliessender´ -- the title is a very Mahlerian expression, meaning `ever flowing´ reflects aspects of Mahler's work where I have highlighted some of the fluid Islamic inflections, the ornamental grace-notes and arabesque-like melodies that lie embedded in the Symphony. I think of this piece as a kind of musical `mirror ball´ spinning out the saffron colours of horns, the biting basil sweetness of reeds and shifting restlessness of stringed instruments in a series of glances sideways at Mahler's music.

Immer Fliessender was commissioned as a companion piece to Mahler's Ninth Symphony by the Sydney Symphony and Symphony Australia as part of the composer's residency with the Sydney Symphony. The residency is supported by the Sydney Symphony and Symphony Australia with financial assistance from the Australian government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

First Performances: 18, 20, 21, 23 May 2005, Sydney Opera House. Dedicated to the Sydney Symphony and conductor Gianluigi Gelmetti.

Orchestration: picc, 3fl-3ob, cor ang-cl eflat, 3cl in A, bass cl-3bsn, cbsn; 4hn-3tpt-3tbn-bass tuba; 2 timp-2perc; 2harp; strings (vln1 & 2, vla, vc, dbass)

Duration: 8 minutes approx.

Programme note © Liza LIM