The Imagination of Eleanor Alberga

Part I

Works featured:

ALBERGA: Jamaican Medley (arr. A. Roitstein)

BARTÓK: Duos for Two Violins, Sz. 98

32. “Dance from Máramaros”
43. “Pizzicato”
26. “Teasing Song”
28. “Sorrow”
36. “Bagpipes”

Learn about Eleanor Alberga’s childhood in Kingston, Jamaica, and how folksongs from her birthplace inspired her Jamaican Medley.

Part II

Works featured:

BACH: Fugue No. 11 in F Major, BWV 856 from the Well-Tempered Clavier (arr. A. Roitstein)

As a successful concert pianist, Alberga loved to play and study the music of J.S. Bach. Hear an arrangement of one of Bach’s keyboard works—to see how Alberga later took the same musical concept and made it her own.

Part III

Works featured:

ALBERGA: String Quartet No. 1, I. Détaché et matellato e zehr lebhaft und Swing It Man

Alberga moved across the ocean to the UK, where she came into her own as a composer. In her first string quartet, she evokes an even grander journey—beyond the planet, summoning a musical exploration of “particles of stardust [that] swirl around each other, go their separate ways, collide, or merge.”

Part IV

Works featured:

ALBERGA: Shining Gate of Morpheus
(North American Premiere)

With her musical reference to the mythological Morpheus, god of dreams, Alberga invites us to navigate the endless limits of the human imagination.