Marko Bajzer
Sky-Tinted Water, premiered October 2025 by the Bemidji Symphony Orchestra
Duration: 12 minutes

This piece was the result of my work as the Artist-in-Residence at Voyageurs National Park. It is part of a series of works about the U.S. National Parks called From Sea to Shining Sea, in which each piece/movement tells the story of a different U.S. national park.

The title of the piece is a reference to a translation of the name “Minnesota.” Often translated to “sky-tinted water,” or “cloudy water,” a more faithful translate of the Dakota expression is “place where the water is so still, it reflects the sky.” The magic of Voyageurs is that the beauty of the park lies not in specific locations to see, but rather this relationship between the water and sky. It is ever-changing, cannot be predicted or anticipated, and requires open eyes and a mindset of being in the moment.

This piece musically depicts several scenes from my time in the park. The first is paddling through a muddy, reedy marsh on a gloomy morning, providing a perfect spotlight for the low reeds to shine. The marsh then opens into an estuary, protected from the wind, in which the water is a perfect mirror of the brooding sky. In this section, the first violins and violas are playing melodies that are near inversion of each other, while the second violins along with winds and bowed vibraphone hold out a drone representing the silvery surface of the water.

Emerging from the safety of this estuary and into the open waters of Voyageurs’ massive lakes, the wind and water assume a different character. Strong winds can materialize with little notice and large waves can make for a… let’s say exhilarating… experience for paddlers.

Oftentimes the turbulence of the afternoon winds give way to a meditative stillness, and towering cloud formations reflected in the water give the sense that one is rowing through the sky. Again, the musical technique of inversion is employed such that the cellos and basses are a mirror image of the first and second violins while the violas’ drone represents the impossibly still surface of the water. The day progresses to a stunning sunset as the sun retreats behind the horizon in a blaze of quiet glory, both in the sky and the water.

Night falls and the sky awakens once again as the aurora borealis materializes. Northern Minnesota is one of the best places in the contiguous United States to view the aurora, and the still lake water again creates a mirror image of the aurora in the water for an experience that is twice as stupendous.

Interspersed in the piece are two musical quotes that pay homage to the cultural history of northern Minnesota. The namesake of the park are the voyageurs, French-Canadian fur traders who were the first Europeans to frequent the area. Their preferred mode of transportation was via canoe, in which they often paddled for sixteen hours a day transporting hundreds of pounds of furs from the wildernesses of the north woods to the wealthy socialites of the east coast and Europe. They have a quasi-legendary status in this area, and besides their feats of strength and endurance, they were also known for their singing. In Sky-Tinted Water I’ve quoted a voyageur song, “En Roulant ma Boule,” whose tune catches the wind and breathlessly wafts in from centuries ago.

The other significant and much longer lived cultural history of the area is that of the Ojibwe people, the Indigenous Americans which are part of the larger Anishinaabe, and have lived in what is now northern Minnesota for millennia, and are among the largest tribal populations north of the Rio Grande. The Ojibwe were the ones who were trapping and skinning the furs who then traded with the voyageurs for various goods. The Ojibwe hunted and skinned the furs, and then traded them to the voyageurs for various goods. The song used in this piece is, “Approach of the Thunderbirds.”

- Marko Bajzer, composer

Antonín Dvořák, 1841 - 1904
Silent Woods
Duration: 7 minutes

Silent Woods is the fifth movement of a cycle for piano four-hands titled “From the Bohemian Forest.” It was composed in 1883 and was well received. Because of its popularity, in 1891 Dvořák reworked it, replacing the second pair of piano hands and replacing with a cello. The cello adds a depth of feeling and is able to sing over the accompanying piano. Because of the work’s continued popularity, Dvořák composed an orchestral score to replace the piano in 1893.

The piece is in a very romantic style, with the cello carrying the melody and emotion. The reflective tone of Silent Woods evokes the kind of solitary introspection found in German Romantic art, such as the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. 

Silent Woods could be mistaken for the slow, middle movement of a concerto. It doesn’t need virtuosic fireworks to impress, just the sublime voice of the cello. In the early measures, the “Woods” of the title can be discerned by “bird calls” in the flute. The mood is nostalgic, even melancholic, bringing to mind an image of an older man walking in the forest and remembering his past. In the middle section, an intermezzo of sorts, there is an urgency and a lushness of tone, perhaps recalling the wanderer’s youth.

The emotional feeling continues until the end, where the cello climbs to its highest singing strains before descending to fade from our ears on its lowest notes. It’s interesting to compare the three versions of Silent Woods, listening to how Dvořák reimagines his composition. There are subtle differences in the three, showing a master using all his powers.

Program notes by Andrew Good

Gustav Holst, 1874-1934
The Planets
Duration: 50 minutes

Gustav Holst was a successful composer by the time of the premiere of The Planets in 1918. He made his living for years prior playing trombone in various orchestras and teaching music. In 1906, he became the head of Music at St. Paul’s Girls’ School, which offered him financial stability. His good friend, Ralph Vaughan Williams, often remarked about his excellence as a teacher. He was also a reserved man, a teetotaler and a vegetarian. 

He was fascinated by astrology and often cast his friends’ horoscopes. This interest influenced his choice of the material for The Planets. The seven movements are each, in themselves, a story or a chapter in a collection of impressions or philosophical musings. The music is complex and in some of the movements, programmatic. Holst gave a subtext to each planet which captures both the mood and his impressions.

Mars, The Bringer of War, opens the work and increases in intensity quickly, with a martial flair. There is a persistent statement of uneven rhythmic groupings in 5-beat repetition throughout the movement, it’s easy to feel that John Williams was influenced by Holst in his music for Star Wars. 

The mood changes completely with Venus, The Bringer of Peace. There is a quiet serenity, using solo violin and bells, creating an aura of calm. One writer commented on the “peaceful resignation and nostalgia” invoked.

Mercury, The Winged Messenger, is next, with another striking shift in mood. With its playful bursts of notes passed around between instruments and rapid movement up and down the scale, it is the most flighty and shortest of the movements. With its frantic nature and off-kilter metric complexity, one is reminded of Stravinsky’s Firebird which premiered just a few years earlier.

The keystone of the work is in Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity. Here is the most famous melody in The Planets with syncopated dance rhythms, a trumpet fanfare, and timpani, all leading into the sweeping, soulful theme. It’s been used as the melody for a popular hymn named Thaxted (after the village where Holst lived), something Holst endorsed. After this grand centerpiece reaches its completion, the section ends with a return to the brisk pace of the beginning with great jollity.

Saturn, The Bringer of Old Age, mirrors the “relentless approach of old age.” There is a quiet start in the bass instruments, with repeated chords which are quietly distinguished, and build in intensity only to fade to nothing. There are bells which evoke church bells and suggest a funeral procession and eulogy.

In Uranus, The Magician, Holst dramatically changes the mood. There is a frolicky story told which is reminiscent of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Paul Dukas. The movement goes from fortissimo to pianissimo in the telling of the tale.

The Planets ends with an introspective movement, Neptune, The Mystic. He uses a women’s chorus singing wordlessly, with the dynamics rarely rising above pianissimo. British music critic John Warrack writes that there is “an unresolved timelessness…never ending, since space does not end, but drifting away into eternal silence.” This is a fitting end to Holst’s masterpiece as we recognize that the vastness of the universe seems to continually expand beyond our ability to grasp.

Program notes by Andrew Good