WNMD 2025 · CONCERT 20
Into the Light / Para a luz
05-06-2025 · 18h00
São Luiz Teatro Municipal, Sala Bernardo Sassetti
Lisbon
Bilheteira · Box Office (São Luiz)
Sond’Ar-te Trio
SOND’AR-TE TRIO
Vítor Vieira · violin
Filipe Quaresma · cello
Elsa Silva · piano
ASHLEY JOHN LONG (Wales, 1986)
Beyond the Haze of Winter's Edge (2020), 5’
ISCM Welsh section
DIANA ANDRASHENKO (Ukraine, 2001) YCA
Quadro sobre uma noite estrelada (2023), 7’
GONÇALO GATO (Portugal, 1979)
Elementos (2018), 10’
ISCM Portuguese section
JOSÉ LUIS PERDIGÓN DE PAZ (Spain, 1990) YCA
torque (2019), 14’
ISCM Spanish section
LENKA NOVOSEDLÍKOVÁ (Slovakia, 1989)
VPD (2024), 10’
ISCM Slovak section
SARA CARVALHO (Portugal, 1970)
sobre a areia o tempo poisa (2016), 9’
YCA · ISCM Young Composers Award candidate
PROGRAMME NOTES
ASHLEY JOHN LONG (Wales, 1986)
Beyond the Haze of Winter's Edge (2020), for piano trio
ISCM Welsh section
— This work takes its inspiration from a repetitive dream that I kept having around the time of composition. In the dream, I found myself walking a strange, desolate winter landscape alone, and with no end in sight. I found the imagery unsettling, but strangely calming. The piece reflects these qualities with a character that is predominantly meditative, but hints at a darker undertone with occasional violent outbursts. The work is cyclic in nature and melodic and harmonic materials are transformed through various means, whilst small expressive fragments create brief flurries of activity which always gradually fade once more into stillness.
DIANA ANDRASHENKO (Ukraine, 2001) YCA
Quadro sobre uma noite estrelada (2023), for violin, cello and piano
— Quadro sobre uma noite estrelada [Picture of a Starry Night] comes from the personal interest and search of connection music and painting, using the latter both as an inspiration and a creative process basis. This composition portrays A Starry Night from Van Gogh, which is divided into three main planes corresponding to the three pieces’ sections – Night Sky, Isolated Cypress and Silent Earth. The first shows the sky in movement, spontaneous, turbulent and deep. The second consists of an isolated element that serves as a connection between the sky and the earth, the cypress tree that aims for the cosmic abyss. The last one represents the sleeping village, symbolising nostalgia, peace and serenity.
GONÇALO GATO (Portugal, 1979)
Elementos (2018), for violin, cello, and piano
ISCM Portuguese section submission
— Elementos [Elements] is a set of four short pieces dealing with elementary music concepts. These elements build a highly focused, simple, and direct musical discourse. In the first movement, Melodia, melody is paramount, permeating all three instruments. It is the momentary creator of harmony but also what suggests other musical elements such as the diatonic scale or the triadic chord. In the second movement, Ostinato, the ostinato and its gradual transformations underlie the musical discourse. The third movement, Pulsação, focuses on the pulse, a basilar and fundamental element of music. The pulse is taken not as something implicit but as a raw material for musical construction. In very subtle ways, the sense of metre arises and fades. Sonoridade, the last movement, deals with harmonic sonority in a very elementary way, as simple melodic segments unite a set of chords.
JOSÉ LUIS PERDIGÓN DE PAZ (Spain, 1990) YCA
torque (2019), for piano trio
ISCM Spanish section
— torque (“moment”, “moment of force”, or “turning effect”) is a force that tends to cause rotation or change the rotational motion of a body. The piece explores a musical gesture consisting of an impulse and its retraction. After the piano’s initial impulse, the strings’ melodic lines emerge like elastic threads, which shape and define the duration and intensity of each moment and direct it towards the next.
LENKA NOVOSEDLÍKOVÁ (Slovakia, 1989)
VPD (2024), for violin, cello, and piano
ISCM Slovak section submission
— VPD was composed in 2021, initially for viola, and revised in 2024 for the Prague Philharmonie musicians (Slovak Composers profile concert). The piece involves mixed rhythmical structures. Its middle part is a sound and calm space; at the end, it returns to rhythmically tense music.
SARA CARVALHO (Portugal, 1970)
sobre a areia o tempo poisa (2016), for piano trio
— sobre a areia o tempo poisa [over the sands time stands still] was written in 2016, and it was commissioned by the 38th International Music Festival Póvoa do Varzim. The title of the piece is taken from Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen’s poem Fundo do Mar (Bottom of the Sea) found in her book Poesia I (Poetry I). As suggested in Sophia’s poem, my musical material also works from opposites that cohabit within the same space, where everything is as much divided as it is intertwined, like a web. Thus, like in a dream, the events in my piece succeed in a non-linear way; and time, labyrinth of journeys, releases the memories that were already forgotten.
