Overture Magazine - 2018-19 Season BSO_Overture_MAR_APR | Page 21

APPALACHIAN SPRING
Significant collaborations with
ensembles and conductors have included
Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with Helmuth
Rilling, Duruflé’s Requiem with Donald
Runnicles and Bach’s Mass in B Minor
with Iván Fischer. They returned to
the Kennedy Center in March 2018 for
performances of John Adams’ The Gospel
according to the other Mary with the NSO
and Gianandrea Noseda.
The University of Maryland Concert Choir
last appeared with the BSO in December
2017, performing Mozart’s Requiem, Marin
Alsop, conductor.
About the Concert
ACROSS THE LINE OF DREAMS
Roxanna Panufnik
Born in London, U.K., April 24, 1968
In recent years, a trio of remarkable
female composers has emerged in the
U.K.: Anna Clyne, Helen Grime and
Roxanna Panufnik. Marin Alsop has
already brought the music of the first
two to the Baltimore Symphony; now
she will introduce us to Panufnik, who
is perhaps the most widely popular of the
three. Herself the daughter of a famous
composer, the Polish-born conductor
Andrzej Panufnik, Roxanna Panufnik
is a creator who is as strongly rooted in
world music as in classical music, and
that combination enables her to reach
out to a broader audience than only those
who frequent traditional concert halls.
An honors graduate of London’s
Royal Academy of Music, Panufnik is
particularly renowned for her choral
music and especially works that draw on
her interest in building musical bridges
between different religious faiths and
cultures. Her violin concerto Abraham
incorporated Christian, Islamic and
Jewish chant to create a musical analogy
for the shared monotheistic faith of
these three religions. It was subsequently
transformed into the orchestral Three
Paths to Peace, premiered in Jerusalem
and London by Valery Gergiev.
In 2017 at England’s Garsington
Opera, Panufnik unveiled, to
considerable acclaim, her opera Silver
Birch, based on Siegfried Sassoon’s
famous World War I poems and the
testimony of a British soldier serving
in Iraq. Her librettist was noted British
music journalist Jessica Duchen,
who has joined her again in creating
this new choral and orchestral work,
commissioned by Marin Alsop and the
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Across
the Line of Dreams. Like so many of
Panufnik’s works, it forges an artistic
connection between cultures, drawing
together two heroic women of the
19 th century: Harriet Tubman, the heart
and soul of the Underground Railroad,
and Rani Lakshmibai, an Indian princess
who gave her life in battle against the
occupying British Army.
Jessica Duchen (JD) and Roxanna
Panufnik (RP) have created the
following dialogue to tell us about
their work and the two women whom
it memorializes:
JD: “In Across the Line of Dreams, two
choirs with two conductors tell the
stories of two extraordinary women who
gave everything to save their people.
“Harriet Tubman and Rani
Lakshmibai came from opposite sides
of the world and, of course, never
met—but they had more in common
than you might think. Both were born
in the 1820s. Each decided to fight for
her people’s freedom. Each underwent
a change of name, symbolizing a new,
altered state of being. Each held fast to
her faith. And each risked her life for
a cause greater than herself. Both have
passed into the realms of legend.”
RP: “Each heroine is represented by
one conductor, one choir and half of
the orchestra: Harriet has woodwinds,
brass and percussion and Lakshmibai is
accompanied by harp, piano and strings.”
JD: “Born Araminta (‘Minty’) Ross
in Dorchester County, Maryland,
around 1822, Harriet Tubman fled
slavery in 1849 and became active in the
‘underground railroad,’ a network that
aided the escape of slaves from the deep
south of the U.S., via which she helped to
rescue dozens. Having taken her husband
John Tubman’s surname, she adopted her
mother’s first name to reinvent herself.
She was nicknamed ‘Moses’ for leading
her people to freedom. She died in 1913
aged about 90.”
RP: “Harriet was fervently Christian,
so some of her music has a hymn-like
quality with a drone figuration often
heard in spirituals. Not much is known
about her ancestry, but it is believed her
maternal grandmother, Modesty, was
brought to the U.S. on a slave ship from
West Africa and was thought to be of
the Asante (a.k.a. Ashanti) tribe, who
came from Ghana. Therefore, I’ve used
Ghanaian drum patterns to drive her
music. While researching Asante music,
I came across Joseph S. Kaminski’s
excellent book Asante Ntahera Trumpets
in Ghana—in it, he has transcribed
a signature motif, from Asantehene’s
mmentia musicians ‘Atoto wore sane,’
which means: ‘We are removing the
knot.’ This refers to a legendary knot
that could only be untied by the true
ruler, yet can also describe Harriet’s
brave missions.”
JD: “Rani Lakshmibai was born
Manikarnika Tambe in Varanasi, by
the Ganges, in 1828. Married off to
the Rani of the princely state of Jhansi,
she took the crown after her husband’s
death. Their only child died in infancy,
after which she adopted a young boy,
Damodar, intending him to inherit her
throne. The controlling British East India
Company refused to recognize him as
heir and attempted to exile Lakshmibai.
When a major rebellion took place
against the British in 1857 and was
horribly crushed, she led her forces into
battle herself. She died of her wounds,
aged only 29. A British officer paid
tribute to Lakshmibai after her death,
terming her ‘the bravest and the best.’”
RP: “There is a famous lament ‘Babul
Mora’ about Lakshmibai, written by
the Nawab of Lucknow, after the battle
in which she lost her life. It mourns her

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