Purchase digital and hard copies of Nicolas Namoradze’s music at the Muse Press online store.
Orchestral
“Gravity” Concerto for Double Bass and String Ensemble (2016) 12’
(Double Bass soloist + 2/2/2/2)
Commissioned by and premiered at the Chelsea Music Festival (NYC), June 15, 2016
Notturno for Piano and Orchestra (2015) 12’
(Piano soloist + 3/3/2/2/1)
Premiered at The Juilliard School, April 21, 2015
Chamber
Corrente for Triple Quartet (2018) 11’
(String Quartet, Saxophone Quartet and SATB Vocal Quartet)
Commissioned by the Chelsea Music Festival, premiere date June 11, 2018
Sonata for Violin and Piano (2018) 9’
Commissioned by Tessa Lark
Partita for Keyboard Ensemble (2016) 15’
(Clavichord, Harpsichord, Organ, Piano, Toy Piano)
Commissioned by and premiered at the Chelsea Music Festival, June 17, 2016
Theme and Variation for Violin and Piano (2015) 5’
Commissioned by Tessa Lark, premiered at The Juilliard School, December 4, 2015
Transformations for String Quartet (2015) 8’
Commissioned by and premiered at the Chelsea Music Festival, June 15, 2015
Suite in C for Woodwind Quartet (2014) 9’
(Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon)
Premiered at The Juilliard School, April 16, 2014
Solo Piano
Memories of Rachmaninoff’s “Georgian Song” (2022) 5′
Premiered at the Bella Concert Hall, Calgary, October 25, 2022
Rachmaninoff: Adagio from Symphony No. 2 Op. 27 — arrangement for solo piano (2021) 15′
Premiered at Portland Piano International, Portland, April 2, 2022
Etude VI: Double Notes (2019) 2’
Premiered at the Honens Festival, Calgary, September 5, 2019
Etude V: Entwined Threads (2019) 3’
Premiered at the Honens Festival, Calgary, September 5, 2019
Moon, Refracted: A Variation on Rentarō Taki’s “Kōjō no Tsuki” (2019) 4′
Premiered at the Bunka Kaikan, Tokyo, June 9, 2019
Etude IV: Broken Chords (2018) 2’
Premiered at the Metropolis Ensemble Series, NYC, March 30, 2019
Arabesque (2018) 9’
Premiered at Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall, February 10, 2019
Etude III: Moving Mirrors (2017) 2’
Premiered at October Hall, Central European University (Budapest, Hungary), January 11, 2018
Etude II: Mostly Triads (2017) 2’
Premiered at Lang Recital Hall, Hunter College (NYC) March 21, 2017
Etude I: Major Scales (2015) 2’
Premiered at the Bravo! Vail Festival (Vail, Colorado), July 2, 2016
Chorale Variations (2014) 6’
Premiered at the Chelsea Music Festival, June 14, 2015
Georgian Chorales and Postludes (2014) 14’
Premiered at the Telavi Music Festival (Tsinandali, Georgia), September 25, 2019
Music for Film
Le chant des étoiles (2022)
Dir. Fabienne Verdier, Martin Baizeau, Ned Burgess, Grégoire Pontécaille, prod. atelier Fabienne Verdier
For Ryan (2020)
dir. Jared Houseman, prod. Manor House Productions
Nuit d’Opéra à Aix (2017)
Dir. Martin Baizeau, prod. Festival d’Aix-en-Provence
Walking Painting (2016)
Dir. Fabienne Verdier, prod. atelier Fabienne Verdier
Electroacoustic
“An Unlikely Friendship” for Voice, Harpsichord and Electronics (2016) 4’
Premiered at the CUNY Graduate Center, May 25, 2016
“eau” for Cello and Electronics (2016) 6’
Premiered at the OSA Archives, Budapest, Hungary, April 28, 2016
“entre ciel et terre” for Cello and Electronics (2014) 4’
Premiered at The Juilliard School, December 4, 2014
Electronic
“Bell Fields” – audiovisual work with digital animator Kati Vilim (2016) 9’
Premiered at the CUNY Graduate Center, November 16, 2016
Spiele im Spiegel (2015) 5’
Premiered at the CUNY Graduate Center, November 19, 2015
Three Overtunes (2015) 15’
Premiered at the CUNY Graduate Center, November 19, 2015
RACHMANINOFF: ADAGIO FROM SYMPHONY NO. 2, OP. 27 (arr. Namoradze)
The premiere of Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 in 1908 cemented his reputation as one of the leading symphonists of his time, and to this day the work remains among his most celebrated musical statements. The third movement, Adagio, is emblematic of many features that define his compositional language, including enchantingly expansive melodies, a rich harmonic palette, searing climaxes and lush, full textures.
While adhering strictly to the thematic and harmonic material of the original, this arrangement is less a strict transcription and more a reimagining of the movement for the piano, taking a generally liberal approach with reworking the textures in order to create a pianistically idiomatic piece. The piano writing is informed both by Rachmaninoff’s compositional style as well as my own approach to keyboard texture.
MOON, REFRACTED
For my recent recitals in Japan I wrote a little piece — a kind of reflection on a well-known Japanese song, “Kojo No Tsuki” (“Moon over the Ruined Castle”) by Rentaro Taki — to play as an encore. The piece is called “Moon, Refracted”, and it is set in a theme-and-variation form, first plainly presenting Taki’s melody before my own variation. It’s a sparse, meditative work in which I try to capture both the special atmosphere of this song as well as something of the concept of “wabi-sabi” in Japanese aesthetics.
ETUDES I-III
Each piano etude is inspired by a specific technical, pianistic challenge that serves as a basis for the textures and figurations. In “Major Scales”, the hands switch between different types of scales in various keys, at first in a coordinated manner but soon falling out of sync and bouncing off each other in different directions. An increasingly chaotic interaction between the two hands leads to the eventual disintegration of the passagework. “Mostly Triads” alternates between various types of chordal textures. A study in frequent changes of hand position, the etude fades in at the top of the keyboard and makes its way downwards, departing at the bottom of the piano’s register. In “Moving Mirrors”, short figurations undergo several forms of inversions and distortions in pitch, accentuation, register, melodic shape and rhythm, and as the rate of these transformations increases the passagework gets increasingly frenetic.
NUIT D’OPÉRA À AIX
dir. Martin Baizeau
prod. atelier Fabienne Verdier
WALKING PAINTING
dir. Ghislain Baizeau
prod. atelier Fabienne Verdier
SPIELE IM SPIEGEL
“Spiele im Spiegel” (“Mirror Games”) are short experiments in various musical patterns. In No. 1, several octatonic patterns of different speeds are tightly compressed into a single, 25-second sweep. In No. 2 a single-voice arabesque turns into a series of clusters and, eventually, triads. No. 3 explores the patterns of three bouncing rhythmic palindromes that gradually move into synchrony.
THREE OVERTUNES
“Overtunes” explore the confluence of pitch and rhythm. No. 1 opens with a set of sine waves gently oscillating around two pitches, creating rhythmic patterns from the manipulation of closely clustered frequencies (namely “acoustic beating”). By the end of the piece these waves diverge and spread out into a broad, shimmering chord. No. 2 is “night music” – a certain “chirping” from the acoustic beating can be heard as a pair of gently oscillating augmented triads create a pattern of shifting hexachords that eventually contract into a single pitch. In No. 3, the process is in a certain sense reversed – a raindrop-like rhythmic pitter-patter is sped up to the extreme so as to morph into discernible pitches and fuse with a bright, glowing chorale reminiscent of Georgian folk singing.
THEME AND VARIATION
In “Theme and Variation”, an original Theme written in the style of a Georgian folk song – specifically, one from the Eastern region of Kakheti – is paired with a simple, minimalistic variation, which acts as a kind of reflection or postlude.
TRANSFORMATIONS
The two brief movements of “Transformations” each explore gradual, almost imperceptible shifts between different kinds of textures.
“ENTRE CIEL ET TERRE”
“entre ciel et terre” (“between sky and earth”) for cello and electronic sounds explores an idea central to the painter Fabienne Verdier’s work, that of perpetual motion and transformation. Extracts from Verdier’s discussion of her work are used in the electronic track, and the music often plays an illustrative role for the concepts described in the speech.
CHORALE VARIATIONS
The “Chorale Variations” are based on the chorale theme “Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan”. They are a set of variations in reverse: the theme becomes increasingly recognizable as the work progresses.
