NSC June2024 Lifchitz Yellow Ribbons No 42

MAX LIFCHITZ Yellow Ribbons No. 42 (2006)
Max Lifchitz, conductor
The North/South Chamber Orchestra
JUNE 23, 2024
Max Lifchitz was awarded first prize in the 1976 International Gaudeamus Competition for Performers of Twentieth Century Music held in Holland. Robert Commanday, writing for The San Francisco Chronicle described him as "a young composer of brilliant imagination and a stunning, ultra-sensitive pianist." The New York Times music critic Allan Kozinn praised Mr. Lifchitz for his "clean, measured and sensitive performances” while Anthony Tommasini remarked that he “conducted a strong performance.” Payton MacDonald writing for the American Record Guide remarked ”Mr. Lifchitz is as good on the podium as he is behind the piano.”
Lifchitz’s Yellow Ribbons belong to a series of compositions written as homage to the former American hostages in Iran. These compositions are a personal way of celebrating the artistic and political freedom so often taken for granted in the West. Recent tragic events in New York City and elsewhere convinced the composer that continuing to work and perform this series begun in the early 1980’s was both appropriate and worthwhile.
The music of Yellow Ribbons No. 42 seems to emanate out of the timbric qualities inherent in the instruments that make up the ensemble (wind quintet and string quintet). Its musical language employs melodic and rhythmic gestures derived from various ethnic sources and historical eras. The mysterious, obdurate opening double bass solo leads to a clarinet and bassoon duo built around the processional Hanacpachap Cussicuinin - the polyphonic composition published in Perú in the early 1600's probably composed by a Quechua music student. Alternating solo and dramatic tutti passages featuring the oboe, French horn and bassoon - this one featuring a free adaptation of a Lybian caravan song - lead to the work’s climactic moment where each instrument starts moving at its own speed while recapitulating some of the motivic gestures heard before. The work was written to mark North/South Consonance’s 25th season and was first performed on February 3, 2006.
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