WNMD 2025 · CONCERT 14
Rough Shapes / Formas ásperas
03-06-2025 · 21h00
Centro Cultural de Belém, Pequeno Auditório
Lisbon
Bilheteira · Box Office (CCB)
João Quinteiro · conductor
Clara Saleiro (flute) · Tiago Mourato (clarinet) · Tomás Martin (saxophone) · Paulo Amendoeira (percussion) · Miguel Leal (piano) · Luís Castelo (E-guitar) · Rui C. Antunes (violin) · Héctor Fernández (viola) · Pedro do Carmo (cello) · Raquel Leite (double bass) · Alexandre Furtado (production)
RICARDO RIBEIRO (Portugal, 1971)
Asper (2016–2017), 11’
MARÍA EUGENIA LUC (Argentina, 1958)
Forest (2019), 8’
Musikagileak
LEONTIOS HADJILEONTIADIS (Greece, 1966)
Platonic Solids (2022), 5’
ISCM Greek section
GUO YUAN (China, 1968)
Chilly River and Snow (2022), 9’
ISCM Chengdu section
LUÍS SALGUEIRO (Portugal, 1993) YCA
All endings are sad, all endless things are impossible to bear (2022), 10’
ELOAIN LOVIS HÜBNER (Germany, 1993) YCA
Crunch modes 1.0 (2023), 11’
ISCM German section
YCA · ISCM Young Composers Award candidate
PROGRAMME NOTES
RICARDO RIBEIRO (Portugal, 1971)
Asper (2017), 11'
— “The work Asper (2017) develops through the dynamic repetition of sonic material, structured by gradual variations and subtle transformations of recurring elements. The treatment of the material emphasises a blend of traditional instrumental techniques and extended techniques, with a particular focus on the latter, playing a central role in shaping the musical discourse. The predominance of extended techniques contributes to expanding the timbral and gestural spectrum of the instruments. The piece, therefore, aligns with a compositional approach aimed at exploring sound’s physical and perceptual limits without completely breaking away from the idiomatic identity of the instruments.” (Tiago Carvalho)
MARÍA EUGENIA LUC (Argentina, 1958)
Forest (2019), for flute, clarinet, alto saxophone, violin, cello, and piano
Musikagileak
— Forest is a sextet, commissioned by the Tres Cantos Festival, for flute in C, clarinet in B flat, alto saxophone, violin, cello, and piano. For me, the forest is one of the most fascinating ecosystems on earth due to the richness and variety of its fauna and flora. It is a source of life, a generator of oxygen, a protector of water and soil, and a help to avoid climatic adversities. My work Forest tries to evoke a bucolic soundscape, immersing the listener’s imagination in the sound universe of the forest: the sound of the wind and birds framed by the most profound silence, the murmur of the water of the stream or the rain pattering on the leaves of the trees and stones, nature expanding and breathing in the slowness of its evolution... The work proposes a sound walk through an illusory forest that slowly evolves from noise (unstressed sounds, suggested whispers, creaks, blows, scrapes, blow, clatters...) until they gradually transform into tonic sounds that timidly come together to configure a harmonic movement that densifies directionally without interruption, and that when it reaches its maximum density sinks into the darkness of a languid coda that cyclically suffocates the “promenade”. This work's technical-aesthetic approach revolves around Sound Configurations structured along three axes: Timbre, Time, and Space.
LEONTIOS HADJILEONTIADIS (Greece, 1966)
Platonic Solids (2022), for alto flute, alto saxophone, bass clarinet, vibraphone, and double bass
ISCM Greek section
— The piece is based on the concept of Platonic Solids, also known as regular solids or regular polyhedra, which are convex polyhedra with identical faces made up of congruent convex regular polygons. These three-dimensional, convex, and regular solid objects have polygonal faces that are similar in form, height, angles, and edges, and an equal number of faces meet at each vertex. These specifications are met only by five geometric solids, i.e., the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron (Fig. 1). The names of the Platonic solids are determined by the number of faces that each solid has. Many aspects of our universe are influenced by the Platonic Solids, also known as regular polyhedra. They can be found in crystals, microscopic sea animal skeletons, children's toys, and art. Many philosophers and scientists, including Plato, Euclid, and Kepler, have studied them. The Platonic Solids have been used as the building blogs of the “Constellation” art work by the American renowned artist Ralph Helmick to commemorate the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan’s 100th birthday, at The Founder’s Memorial, Abu Dhabi, UAE. The “Constellation” consists of 1327 “floating” Platonic Solids anchored to 1,110 strands of 30 m long cables (Fig. 2 and cover image). The music work uses as sound elements the analogies of the different Platonic Solids as expressed in the sound patterns that construct the final sonic outcome. The structure of the piece follows the shape distribution of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan on th\e score (Fig. 3, pgs. 2-5), with pg. 1 representing the background of the image, providing a rough reference to his contemplation of the constellation of universe units that construct the whole. The piece was commissioned by the Greek Composers’ Union for the Athens Festival 2022.
Fig. 1. Platonic solids in ascending order of number of faces (from left to right): tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron and icosahedron.
GUO YUAN (China, 1968)
Chilly River and Snow (2022), for eight instrumentalists
ISCM Chengdu section
—Chilly River and Snow was commissioned by Takako Arakida Fund of Japan. It was written in 2022 based on the poem River Snow by Tang Dynasty poet Liu Zhongyuan. It depicts a scene in which, in the snow-covered mountains, not a single bird is spotted, and no man’s footprint can be traced. Only an old man wearing a straw cape and bamboo hat is fishing in a little boat on a broad, icy, cold river. The work consists of two parts. In the beginning, the pizzicato on notes A and flat 1/4 A of the cello, the pizzicato-like sound through pressing strings on note A of the piano together with the harmonic overtone of strings draw a picture of cold mountains. With the melody obscured by polyphony and repeated several times, the music uses a non-octave circulating scale starting from note A and spirals up gradually until bA to form a non-octave circulation. The second part begins with the low note A on the piano. The “singable” melody keeps spiralling up from bA at the end of the first part. It makes a non-octave circulation reversed with the bass line of the piano to the highest and lowest notes of the range. Within this vast acoustic space, the harmonics of strings, fragmented melody and scattered punctate piano sounds all contribute to unfolding a scroll of Chinese ink painting in which no human and birds are traced in the mountains and only an old man fishing on a cold river.
LUÍS SALGUEIRO (Portugal, 1993) YCA
All endings are sad, all endless things are impossible to bear (2022), 10'
— This piece stems from an intellectual failure. The initial impetus for the creation of the piece was a passage from the work Ich und Du, in which Martin Buber asserts that “the life of human beings does not take place in the sphere of transitive verbs alone”. “Es besteht nicht aus Tätigkeiten allein, die ein Etwas zum Gegenstand haben” — “It does not exist in virtue of activities alone which have some thing for their object”. The phrase towered above those around it, and the promise of a unique grammar encouraged my penchant for parataxis and generalized offense of linguistically-inspired musical syntax (to say nothing of the Nietzschean impetus to remake the grammar that prevents us from conceiving new and radical relationships with the world, which also supports Buber’s project). But the examples that Buber offers only seem to define this “sphere of transitive verbs”. “Ich nehme etwas wahr. Ich empfinde etwas. Ich stelle etwas vor. Ich will etwas. Ich fühle etwas. Ich denke etwas”. Of that new promised grammar, nothing. I let, then, another book inform my work: “Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End”. Barbara Herrnstein Smith deepened, with answers from the field of poetry, my understanding of the driving questions of the piece. It then became one about what makes music end — about what makes anything end — and how to recover eros from stasis; about cadences, interruptions, connections and endings. The piece is dedicated to Philipp Henkel, brother-in-arms.
ELOAIN LOVIS HÜBNER (Germany, 1993) YCA
Crunch modes 1.0 (2023), for ensemble, sound objects, amplification, and live electronics
ISCM German section
— The English word “crunch” combines delicate situations, physical activity and sound. Depending on the context, it refers to a crunch, a sporting exercise, a state of crisis or a decisive point, a question on which much depends. In crunch modes 1.0, things from different contexts are brought together. Everyday materials are used to prepare the instruments. Everyday objects meet the world of the sublime, the concert, and take on a life of their own that cannot always be controlled. Just as the patterns of a kaleidoscope change as it rotates, the sound images and textures join together. The players and their prepared instruments and sound objects present themselves as the actors in crunch mode. They allow the listeners to participate in this hot phase and, in the collision of life and art, bring out the “magic of palpable madness” with a slight wink/ irony.