Work Information
Alberto Iglesias : Three Songs in the Land of the Lemon Trees
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Programme Note
In the Land of the Lemon Trees is a work for Soprano and Chamber Orchestra, divided into three movements.
I have based it on three poems; Last Echo by John Ashbery, Voyageurs by René Char and The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain by Wallace Stevens.
The first movement, The Sprayed Poem, would be located at a crossroads; it is the start point of this intimate odyssey. The second movement, La Reine des Oiseaux leads us through the extensive field that the traveller crosses; a field lightened by lemon trees, thoughts and digressions. The third movement Ascending the Metaphor represents the climb up the mountain that presides over all this territory: the rite of passage to a last and powerful image.
During the spring of 2008 my friend and composer Osvaldo Golijov invited me to the performance of his Opera Ainadamar in London. I was fascinated by his work and Dawn Upshaw’s performance. And this is how I personally met Dawn who I had admired and followed for years. She spoke to me about Saint Paul and its wonderful orchestra, inviting me to write a work with total freedom.
Reviews
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Commissioned by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Iglesias’s cycle sets three poems: Last Echo by John Ashbery, Voyageurs by Rene Char and The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain by Wallace Stevens. Iglesias’s renamed movements (The Sprayed Poem, La Reine des Oiseaux, and Ascending the Metaphor), paint a searching metaphysical journey to find meaning in a meaningless universe.
The heart of the work is the extended Rene Char setting and, in addition to her fine French diction, Upshaw conveyed the music’s sense of rhapsodic longing, as well as the more elliptical spareness of the final Stevens setting. [...]this is an attractive and compelling work and was given a worthy sendoff by Upshaw, Harth-Bedoya and the orchestra.
Lawrence A. Johnson, Chicago Classical Review, 07/11/2009
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