deep inside the woods
Instrumentation: Soprano and Piano Completed: February 25, 2006 Dedicated to: Abigail Haynes Duration: 4 minutes Text: by Ivy Wang (b. 1984) Premiered: April 26, 2006 by Abigail Haynes, soprano, and Trevor Gureckis, piano
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Winner of the 2007 ASCAP / Lotte Lehmann Foundation Art Song CompetitionAudio
Abigail Haynes, soprano; Zachary Wadsworth, piano
Program Note
The music of the song follows Ivy Wang’s poem through its alternating moods of hollowness and horror, of homage and hope. In the piano, these disparate landscapes are represented by the wandering counterpoint of the opening, the shallow heartbeat of a muted piano string, and the lush evocation of music long past. In the voice, a simple, low melody grows into a virtuosic line of utmost passion, only to fade back to a resigned monotone. In the end, just as the poem seems more to slip away than to truly end, the piano’s closing music grows higher and higher, fainter and fainter, evaporating into the poem’s image of a ceaselessly cold, dark wood. The song is dedicated to Abigail Haynes, the soprano who sang its premiere.
Performances (4)
| April 20, 2006, 8:00 pm (premiere) | Abigail Haynes, soprano; Trevor Gureckis, piano Bethesda Lutheran Church, New Haven, CT |
| February 8, 2007, 8:00 pm | Abigail Haynes, soprano; Zachary Wadsworth, piano Sprague Hall, Yale School of Music, New Haven, CT |
| January 26, 2011, 7:00 pm | Jamie Jordan, soprano; Daniel Pesca, piano Student Alumni Union, A120, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY |
| January 28, 2011, 7:00 pm | Jamie Jordan, soprano; Daniel Pesca, piano Rosch Recital Hall, SUNY Fredonia, Fredonia, NY |