Classical and Modern Music
Format: CD
Code: 111853
EAN: 3838898111853
From Nothing to Breathing and Onto a Journey:
On the Waves of a Sound and Reverberation inside the Flute's Body
The reverberation, which marks the beginning of understanding music as a sequence of sounds, was born with the sound of a flute one early morning ages ago, when a naiad turned into reeds while fleeing from the lecherous Pan. In a flow of wind, the reeds produced gentle and sweet sounds. Pan made his pipe out of them and the wind created history.
According to its mythological origins, the flute is a sensuous and exciting musical instrument. Nevertheless, in the present world it is as if it were an innocent child. If this child is abused by the world pursuing its own aims, the sound is lost and we don't hear it ever again.
In this modern world of history, where the sensuousness of the instant is stronger then the illusion of eternity, it is even more important for us to carefully listen to the imprints of sounds, which creatively unite the contemporary language of the composer and the fragile interpretive gesture.
This CD by Aleš Kacjan is an original work of a re-creator, who has throughout his entire performing adventures, has been aware of both the importance of the sound spectrum of his musical instrument and the importance of listening to the languages and the solutions which other composers have developed for his instrument. This is confirmed by his choice of compositions, which can be seen as a journey across the landscapes of noble sonic undulations: a journey with its own
kaleidoscope of musical narrations, rendered with subtle sensibility and impeccable virtuosity.
The journey starts with a break from the reality of West European culture. In his composition Hyxos (1955) as in many others, Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988) touches upon the mythology of the Far East. Hyxos is from the beginning of the period in which Scelsi developed a completely original and unique musical language, where an individual sound isn't only a music score, but a dynamical essence, which forms and transforms under various influences. In Hyxos, the
flautist with an alto flute is the soloist, a lone bearer of a subtle tonal narration, who brings forth to us the sensibility of the Eastern mythical world, with the help of allusion and magic abstraction. The soloist doesn't engage in a purposive interaction: he is almost impersonally surrounded by two gongs and wooden percussions, which sound like overtures, interplays and conclusions. Together they create subtle colour contrasts and a feel of spatial and poetical depth. They are like
scenes from a ceremony in the abyss of death, solitude and silence. Another composition which evokes a ceremonial feel is Kalais (1976) by Thorkell Sigurbjörnsson (1938), the internationally renowned Icelandic composer. The composition is based on an intertwining between Greek and Icelandic mythology, where Kalais is the son of Borealis or the Northern wind, and at the same time a musician who plays the lute and who with his music beckons all sea creatures to
come to the shores of Iceland. Sigurbjörnsson changed the lute for a flute and with the help of various techniques and modes of expression - the flute brings the intermezzo of Brahms' Symphony No.3 in the style of Japanese Shakuhachi - created a very picturesque musical fresco, full of associations with the sea, waves and the Sirens.
The journey leaves the mythical world and enters the organised reality of the Slovene musical avant-garde. Primož Ramovš (1921-1999) is undoubtedly the father of this musical movement in Slovenia. His thoughts regarding the avant-garde as a negation of the past are: "Life taught me that we live on a planet and that life goes on. In other words, we can't deny yesterday. In a way you can and you have to, if you want today to be different than yesterday and tomorrow different
from today, but I still think that the experience of the past stays within us." Ekspanzija (Expansion) (1963) was created during the formation of the group Pro musica viva, and is one of many Ramovš's very efficient concert compositions for a soloist. Ekspanzija has remained tonally abstract, a fresh virtuosic affirmation of the soloist until today. The 40 years younger composition Sence (Shadows) by Pavel Mihelčič (1937) evokes similar feelings. The
composer's starting point often isn't the music itself, and within this starting point he directs his sensibility and aesthetics when creating his musical piece. The same can be said for Sence, which nevertheless aren't just shadows, reflections of shapes or figures: they are sound shapes and figures themselves and including their tonal reflections, they create a flow of an extremely dynamic and intense sound continuity.
The central piece of this journey is at the same time the foundation of this musical narration; it is a descent into a well of sounds, into the body of a musical instrument itself, into the body from where the sounds emanate. And, out of nothing, a breathing, hot breath on my ankles ... It comes out of the nothingness of silence and again returns there. Neville Hall (1962) is a New Zealander, who has been living and working in Slovenia for more than 15 years now.
Hall wrote the composition for Aleš in 2000 and it is the first of two pieces on this CD composed especially for Aleš. The most thorough description of the music from this composition is the excerpt from Neville's aesthetic definition: "On the surface, my music seems to be very detailed and often materialised with a very soft dynamic. The purpose of this is to open the listener's ears and to encourage him/her to experience the music actively and in detail, and to create a substance allowing
for aesthetic perception. ... I'm looking for the material which isn't burdened by conventional symbolic meaning, but which nevertheless enters a dialogue with the inner substance of musical conventions, with primal sonic forms." And, out of nothing, a breathing and the substance of a pure sound, amalgamated into a subtle and ornately created sonic poetry.
From subtle sonic poetry, another twist to the centre: this time to the European avant-garde. Bruno Maderna (1920-1973) and Luciano Berio (1925-2003) were together with Luigi Nono in their home country, and together with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulezo and Henri Pousseur in the European arena, the key figures of a newly-formed musical movement after WW2. In Italy, under the auspices of RAI, the Italian national broadcaster, they established the Studio
di Fonologia Musicale (1955), the first Italian studio for electronic music, and Incontri Musicali, musical encounters with a series of concerts and music magazines. They are interconnected not only by their professional co-operation, but also by their similar and yet different aesthetics, as we can see from two of their compositions on this CD. They were both recorded at the Slowind Festival (Honeyrêves on October 9th, 2001; and Sequenza 1 on November 24th, 2008) and are technically the most
complex and demanding compositions on this CD. Both composers share their affiliation to abstract language and concise texture, but are different in the sensibility of their approach to the audio material. The composition Honeyrêves (Honey Dreams) for flute and piano (1961) in miniature reflects two expressions of Bruno Maderna. He's calm and at the same time humorous in the first and the last section, while vehement, almost aggressive in the middle one. HoneyrÊves is a typical
avant-garde composition with sharp tonal and dynamic contrasts or jumps, complex rhythmical structures and unpredictable interchanges of sounds and silences. Luciano Beri's Sequenza 1 (1958) is the first in the series of sixteen compositions for various solo instruments. Berio dedicated the third one (1965), for a female voice to his wife, the famous mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian. The string of sequences is concluded by the sequence for the violoncello, which Berio composed a
year prior to his death, in 2002. All of the sequences were created with the aim of studying the technical capacity of an instrument to its extreme, in the sense of the so-called "extended techniques". The same is true also for Sequenza 1 and is revealed in a complex virtuosity of handling all audio parameters. The inaudible background of this composition creates the problem of reading the sheet music of this tonal complexity and the communication of the interpreter with the musical
score. In his second recording, Berio allowed for the flexibility of interpretation by allowing the performer toward an easier "negotiation" through the material without infringing upon the audio result. "I can't imagine the music without imagining a journey. As a composer, I can travel to the most magnificent places," Berio once said.
The journey on the undulating sound of flute and its imprints on this CD of Aleš Kacjan, ends with a composition, which is a small journey by itself. It is based on an endless sound tape, on a sound loop. The structure represents a sequence of five parts: the introduction is the soloist playing on the flute's head, followed by a repeating rondo refrain. From this refrain, two soloist parts emerge: the first one is a virtuosic sonic cascade, while the second one is an extensive improvisation,
which in its concert form competes with the recording. The latter concludes the composition with a slowed-down play of micro harmonics. Nedokončana zanka (Unfinished Loop) is like a revived reminiscence of an ancient ceremonial circular dance; of the repeated movements with exits pushing towards abstraction, solitude of the intimate and the shudder of unification and with the continual returns into the depths of pulsation and the pinnacle of a passing moment. The circular movement
changes eternally in its immutability - it is without a beginning and without an end and therefore symbolises time, which defines itself as a constant and immutable sequence of moments, as a moving image of an immovable eternity. As music.
Bor Turel
COMPOSITIONS:
1. - 3. Giacinto Scelsi: Hyxos
1. stavek
2. stavek
3. stavek
4. Thorkell Sigurbjörnsson: Kalais
5. Primož Ramovš: Ekspanzija (listen!)
6. Pavel Mihelčič: Sence
7. Neville Hall: ...and, out of nothing, a breathing, hot breath on my ankles
8. Bruno Maderna: Honeyreves
9. Luciano Berio: Sequenza
10. Bor Turel: Nedokončana zanka
