Memory with Lotte Betts-Dean and Brett Dean: Digital Programme

Programme

Charles Ives Memories (arr. Sebastian Gottschick)
A. Very Pleasant
B. Rather Sad

Aaron Copland IV. Simple Gifts from Old American Songs, Set 1

John Adams I. Shaking and Trembling from Shaker Loops

Radiohead Harry Patch (In Memory Of) (arr. Lee Reynolds)

Charles Ives The Unanswered Question

Mieczysław Weinberg Marta’s Aria fromThe Passenger (arr. Lee Reynolds)

François Couperin Les Barricades Mystérieuses (arr. Thomas Adès)

Caroline Shaw Cant voi l’aube

Nadia Boulanger Versailles (arr. Brett Dean)

Maurice Ravel V. Menuet fromLe tombeau de Couperin (transc. Mason Jones)

Brett Dean VI. Locket from Recollections

György Kurtàg Part 1: No. 17 Stolz & Part 4: No. 28 Zu Spät from Kafka-Fragmente

György Kurtàg Ligatura-Message to Frances-Maria (The Answered Unanswered Question)

György Kurtàg Part 4: No. 3 In memoriam Robert Klein & No. 6 In memoriam Joannis Pilinszky fromKafka-Fragmente

Kurt Weill Nanna’s Lied (arr. Brett Dean)

Aaron Copland IX. At the River from Old American Songs, Set 1

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Programme note

For composer-conductor Brett Dean, music and memory are inextricably bound: ‘Music touches an aspect of our memory banks in a way that few other things do quite so profoundly… It’s sort of on ‘hard drive.’’ Memory is also critical to how we engage with music in more technical ways: ‘In a very basic sense, a lot of musical forms rely on even immediate memory – that is, recalling themes – so one can understand the unfolding of a composition in real time.’

By turns playful and profound, this programme explores the connections between music and memory, from collective commemoration to personal nostalgia. The programme is also underpinned by the depth of memory shared by its co-curators Brett Dean and his daughter, the singer Lotte Betts-Dean. As Lotte notes, ‘I’ve been singing Brett’s music since I was a child and I grew up listening to him composing. Falling asleep as a kid, I’d hear the sounds of early music software, with notes being punched into a computer, and of him noodling around on the viola. We have a lot of shared musical taste and I’m sure a lot of my musical taste is thanks to [Brett’s] and what he played when I was growing up. I remember listening to so many different things – I’d go to classical concerts when [Brett] was a member of the Berlin Philharmonic, but then at home we’d listen to all sorts of other things: lots of experimental music and electronic music, trip-hop, rock… Jeff Buckley was on high rotation. It was a very varied upbringing! There’s something in this variety that we also wanted to share in this programme.’

The programme is formulated as a kind of ‘playlist’. As Brett notes, ‘some connections are just pure instinct. Then there are some very serendipitous links or contrasts as well. Sometimes it’s based on the kind of sonic impression that one piece leaves and coming out of that into the next piece, either through something similar or something very contrasting.’ For Lotte, this approach feels like a ‘mosaic or a patchwork quilt… It’s quite a contemplative and thoughtful programme, but it’s also kind of thrilling because it’s so varied. And I think there will be some exciting sharp corners for the ear as a listener.’

Amid this instinctive, playlist-like flow, distinct musicological connections abound. Lotte notes how ‘sometimes it’s contemporary composers reworking existing works, or writing in the style of something more ancient, like Caroline Shaw’s [2022] Cant voi l’aube (‘Can’t See the Dawn’) [which sets a 12th-century text attributed to the French poet Gace Brulé] or Thomas Adès’ reimagining of Couperin’s Les Barricades Mystérieuses. Lotte reflects how ‘there are moments within this programme where music from hundreds of years ago can feel as groundbreaking as something brand new, while some of the newest music can then suddenly feel very, very old.’ Then there are works that are directly ‘in memoriam’, like Kurtág’s Kafka-Fragmente.’

Hungarian composer György Kurtág features twice in the programme. The other piece included is his response to Ives’ enigmatic The Unanswered Question of 1908, with its soaring trumpet line that contemplates ‘The Perennial Question of Existence’. For Brett, ‘Kurtág’s music is often an act of memorial and of dedication. His Ligatura-Message to Frances-Marie (The Answered Unanswered Question) (1989) is dedicated to the cellist for whom he wrote the piece, Frances-Marie Uitti, who was developing this technique of playing the cello with two bows such that all four strings could be played at once. (We’ll be using his subsequent version with two cellos.) The piece does have a very definite homage to Ives’ Unanswered Question, in that just as Ives’ question is put out there multiple times by the trumpet call, so too there is a dialogue between the low chords of the cellos and the higher chords of the violins then a distant celeste. But I think it’s fair to say that the answered unanswered question of Kurtág is no less intriguing and open – and in many ways unanswered – as Ives’ original.’

Two other Ives works feature in the programme. ‘Memories’ actually comprises two short songs – ‘Very Happy’ and ‘Rather Sad’ – both written in 1897, while the composer was still a student at Yale. Brett highlights how these songs help underline from the very outset of the programme ‘the way memory can colour things for us over time. Some things get rose-tinted, other things can seem far darker than they may have really been, plus all sorts of variants in between… music is extremely powerful and succinct in conveying these colourings, with or without texts.’

Alongside these works by Ives, a number of other American composers feature, with music by Copland bookending the programme. Brett notes how ‘there is this very particular brand of nostalgia in these American pieces that was fascinating to explore and indulge in for a moment.’ For Lotte, the inclusion of folk song arrangements (such as Copland’s ‘At the River’, a setting of Lowry’s 1865 hymn tune) was a key way to explore ideas of memory: ‘folk song in itself is memory – it’s a form of musical memory.’  John Adams’ Shaker Loops (1978) with its ecstatic ‘shaking and trembling’, also has its roots in folksong, with Adams taking inspiration in the frenetic dances of the now-defunct Shaker colony in New Hampshire.

Brett’s composition ’Locket’ also features a piece taken from a larger six-movement work titled Recollections (2006). Brett describes ‘Locket’ as about the feelings elicited when we ‘find an object that casts a spell and throws you into this long-lost sense of memory. In this instance, the found object is a posthumous piano piece of Clara Schumann’s – her beautiful A-minor Romance. It’s about that moment when you come across something that transfixes you [and] sends you down memory lane.’

The power of music to usher us into different modes of consciousness is at the heart of this programme for Lotte: ‘I really am interested in finding that atmosphere that allows you to go into this slightly other realm of memory and of your own life; I think that music can do this in a way nothing else can. There’s something about it that makes everything we’ve experienced feel present… And I guess that’s what the programme is getting at; memory is such a strange thing that we have at our disposal as alive creatures, as humans.’

Programme notes by Kate Wakeling © 2026