Oscar Strasnoy initiates a work in Colón and promotes homage to Federico Monjeau

“The program is very good. I’m not worried about being a replacement goalkeeper. All the works work well together, ”said Oscar Strasnoy, the Argentine musician who is one of the most charming composers on the scene today.

But before talking about the concert with his compositions, Berio and Ligeti this Wednesday, May 4 at Teatro Colón, Strasnoy gives us a scoop: wrote an article as a tribute to Federico Monjeau, musicologist, teacher and journalist and exceptional music critic Clarionwho died in January 2021,

But let’s go back to the program this Wednesday: “They are two phenomenal works -he said-. Ang Sequence VIII, for Luciano Berio’s solo violin I prefer the fourteen. This is an amazing task. The Violin Concerto by György Ligeti is for me the best in their concerts. And they are all very good. It’s incredible orchestral, very well written for the violin. It is like a compendium of all Ligeti ”.

Not solemn or dogmatic

Reluctant to any dogma and far from all solemnity, Strasnoy he has composed for almost every genrehas lived in Europe for many years and came to Buenos Aires to attend the Latin American premiere of Kuleshovhis first concert for piano and orchestra, released in Canada in 2017 by exceptional pianist Alexandre Tharaud.

-You met Berio and Ligeti. What did they send you?

-I met Berio in the last stage of his life, he helped me a lot. I admire, not all of his work, but some of it is excessive. Massive musician. Probably the smartest of that generationbut he also fell victim to his ease.

Ligeti, on the other hand, spent three years in each job, he took all the time he needed, and his works were perfect. I once listened to a class of his in Paris and he said a good thing: that he always starts with an automatic gesture, he will start playing the piano with his two stumps (he is not a good pianist) and the compositional gesture is to fix the first excitement.

That was super school for me. That kind of Ligeti opened my mind, I was so young and I remember I thought “Ah! Playable”.

-It is unthinkable for many composers of the 20th century, that music is often penetrated by a strong intellectual gesture.

-Of course, in Ligeti the gesture is never intellectual. In the 20th century, there were so many purely imaginary works, that they were very far from musical acts. Neither Ligeti nor Berio had any mental issues. And it shows in the music.

the consolation prize

-Did you write your concert for piano and orchestra when requested?

-It was commissioned by Alexandre Tharaud. He asked Mauricio Kagel. And Kagel died. But before he died he told Alexandre – so Kagelian – that he had a sensational idea and that it was the best concert in history, and he did it for him … but he still hadn’t written it. Alexandre was furious and the consolation prize was my concert.

-The consolation prize is not bad.

–I loved being Kagel’s replacement, despite the fact that my concert had nothing to do with what he was supposed to write. Great to take a post. I hope I don’t die … although I already wrote. I am safe. This is the joke we made with Alexandre: anyone who wanted to write a concerto for him would be sentenced to death. And he will die. (laughs)

-How did you meet Tharaud? I think of the many affinities between you, you cross a seemingly incompatible world.

-I think that’s it. cachafaz This was the first work I had ever seen and he wanted to be on stage. Also, I promised to write an opera for him. We are really friends. When I go to Paris, I stay at his house.

To be a pianist or not

-The pianist with no piano at home. Or did he change his mind?

-No, he’s still not home.

-When you wrote the concert, did you think of it for him, for his way of playing, for his personality?

-Yes, absolutely. More than his personality, I took into account his way of playing, that very Scarlattian way he has.

-You studied piano, didn’t you?

-Yes, with Aldo Antognazzi.

-You know from the inside the winding piano exercises …

-Yes. Until I was 19 years old I still had a minimum desire to be a pianist. Then reality won over me. I didn’t have much time to study, but in my Swiss group, I was the pianist.

-Did you compose a concert from the piano?

Yes, I wrote it entirely on playing the piano. So, no matter how hard it is for pianists, there are no weird things.

-“Kuleshov” is the title of the concert and refers to the name of the Soviet filmmaker who developed the theory about the montage. Why do you go into the world of image to look for references for work?

What happened was I was able to write five movements. They were done but I didn’t like the idea of ​​motion. So I started playing: I cut them out, I had all the fragments on the table and I looked at them. Then I did some kind of assembly work with those pieces and I asked myself: how do I assemble fragments of very different things?

And that’s where I really thought of editing techniques, which I often use in musical theater. A kind of giant rondo began to form and I thought the Kuleshov effect: a still image and different images.

-Can you explain it a little more and its effect on music?

If I have a fixed image of a dog, for example, and next to it I put a human or cat face, you can read something in the dog’s gesture. And if I put a woman next to her, you will read others, even if the dog’s demeanor is always the same. Kureshov saw that, how the before and after image influences the still image, which are always the same. And it’s pretty much a concert idea.

-Didn’t you hide any of the material of some of the movements?

-The only thing I left was a central moment, very virtuoso, between the pianist and some instruments. But since everything is intact, it is not audible as movement. but as a central tunnel.

-There you will hear the reduction of events, the density changes, and the sonority is very specific. Did you put any elements inside the piano?

-Yes, I put some sticks between the ropes used to fix the posters. It sounds between muffled and somewhat lower, like a quarter tone.

-In general, it seems to me that you do not attend the traditional dialogue between the soloist and the orchestra. but you make another kind of interaction. Is the piano like another instrument in the orchestra?

-Yes, the idea is that the orchestra is an amplification of the piano. There are some moments when the piano is alone, but overall, it’s a Schumann quintet idea: the orchestra as an amplified shadow of the piano.

-Have you considered any of the traditional concerts, even if it was to avoid them?

-Actually, what I did was listen to concerts that Tharaud played. Not to imitate them, but to see how far a pianist can go.

-You have written a variety of works for the piano, from studies, preludes, to a concerto. How do you feel about the instrument?

-The piano is my instrument, which is no small thing. I was tied to that tool for hours. Besides this is my typewriter. I don’t write anywhere except on the piano. Very rare. So normally the piano feels like a kind of laboratory for what I do outside of it.

Despite not being a great pianist, I play what I write. It’s like my gateway to the physical world, otherwise you just stay in the imagination, which is very treacherous.

Tribute to Federico Monjeau

The play written by Oscar Strasnoy for Federico Monjeau is called Tombeau Monjeau. The word Tombeau (grave) was used by composers in the 18th century to pay tribute to music. Ravel also used it in the 20th century Le Tombeau de Couperinto pay tribute to the French composer François Couperin.

“The play hasn’t come out yet. The album will be released in May or June. The work was requested of me by Mara Dobrescu, a very good Romanian pianist, and she recorded the piece along with Beethoven’s sonatas Op. 109 and Op. 110, the works that Federico preferred “.

“What I did was a kind of parabola, very filtered, of the Sonata Op. 109. I added some magnets to two of the three strings, to the four notes in the middle of the Sonata Op. 109. The result is a strange soundlike a Lisztian bell ”.

Information

Cycle: Contemporary Columbus In the works of Ligeti, Berio and Strasnoy

Music director: Paul Drucker. soloists: Francesco D’Orazio (violin) Marcelo Balat (piano). Program: Oscar Strasnoy (1970) Kuleshov, concerto for piano and chamber orchestra (2017), American premiere. Luciano Berio (1925-2003) Sequence VIII, for solo violin (1976). Gyorgy Ligeti (1923-2006) Concert for violin and orchestra (1990/92) South American premiere.

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