Kairos - 0012992KAI
Kairos - 0012992KAI
HAUSKOR / Cello Octet Amsterdam, Euskadiko Orkestra Sinfonikoa, dcond: Johannes Kalitzke
In Basque the word Hauskor refers to that which potentially has the quality of breaking itself up into dust thanks to the inner dynamism of the material after which it is named. Thus comes the initial idea of the piece: eight cellists who, because of their new position in space, dim and blur the orchestral convention, trickling what seemed to be a homogeneous group into separate voices which end up confronting the wholeness from which they spring. It is the threshold of a conflict, and over this threshold leans and balances itself what could be alluded to as the production of sounds. It also deals with a new environment within which the ruins of a fragile and worn out orchestral sound erect sound surfaces whose gestures, tempi and dynamics reveal the memories of some renewable meaning. Ears, eyes and memory make the hearing possible : By being disassociated, the visual gesture, the performed sound and the abstract references create new orchestral instruments. Uncertainty, ideational continuity, silence depth, blurring of material outline… the search of dimming the material, of concealing it and wearing it away, eventually aims at highlighting in the hearing the latent meaning of time as it passes by. Hauskor was commissioned by the Orchestra of the Madrid Community and the Cello Conjunto Iberico and their directors, Elias Arizcuren and Jose Ramon Encinar.ORTZI ISILAK / Ernesto Molinari, Euskadiko Orkestra Sinfonikoa, cond: Johannes Kalitzke
"...zur stillsten Stunde, wich mir der Boden: der Traum begann..." _ "Wenn ich je stille Himmel über mir ausspannte..." - Friedrich NIETZSCHE, Also sprach ZarathustraWith the idea of being part of a programme offering Rameau and Strauss, Ortzi Isilak, commissioned by the National Orchestra of Spain, was meant to conjure up Zoroaster. I took two quotations from Nietzsche as the thought and the expression of the sound environment from which the musical idea slowly emerges. These two references may be read philosophically and artistically but can also plainly allude to a certain figurative affinity with the contents of the work. They do not fail to lead, simultaneously, to the awakening of the memory of the "O Mensch!" ("... Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?"): Mahler (3rd Symphony) and Lachenmann (« Zwei Gefühle ») have referred to the poem and appear in the 4th section of Ortzi Isilak. It is at the threshold of a silence with shadows in its horizon that this score was conceived. Its glint always gets deafening and extreme. So as to achieve the desired balance of some textures, the dynamics must always be lowered. The piece is made up of five ceaseless sections, each one of them featuring the birth of a particular orchestral instrument and a different functional relationship to the clarinet which is the only one having a cantabile quality at the tenth minute (the piece lasts about 15 minutes) with the revival of Mahler. As a whole, the sound is eroded and disrupted, not to say defrauded of its « beautiful sound ideal », the orchestral material, still raw, aims at being sculpted into gray and colourless volumes, and the trajectories, with soft transitions, are slow. There are no intermediary dynamics: the extremes come from the necessity of a supposedly vehement and uncompromising aesthetics. The « concertante » idea is just the remains of a conventional situation between the soloist and the group : the link between the two is a play on reciprocal shades. Ortzi Isilak, from the Basque meaning « Silent Skies ».ILUNKOR / Euskadiko Orkestra Sinfonikoa, cond: Johannes Kalitzke
Ilunkor’s five linked parts chase after the mineral and earthlike ideas which laid their foundation; carving out of the sound, creating volumes and ridges through silence, saturating harmony and taking dynamics and registers up to the extreme, designing shape as a maze made up of windows and things broken ... those are among the concerns that guided the composition of this piece, those, repeatedly, are the questions raised, whose origin is none other than some hyperbolic worry about the expressive and emotional contents of music. Ilunkor was commissioned by the Basque National Orchestra and premiered under Gilbert Vargas' conducting.