Customer Reviews

Giacinto Scelsi: Quattro Pezzi per Orchestra / Anahit / Uaxuctum

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was assisting in a course on contemporary music last year, and Quattro Pezzi was one of the pieces on the list. While I really loved that piece, for some reason I've only recently listened to the rest of the album, and I have to say: I had to stop reading the liner notes during the last piece on this album (Uaxuctum) and just STARE at the speakers.

Whence does music like this come? What ARE these sounds on the album? About Scelsi himself, we know almost nothing: everything you need to know (except for the very few quotes with which he's provided us occasionally) is in the short biography at the top of this page. Hardly anything was known about him at the time he was writing these pieces, but the music he wrote was at least 20 YEARS ahead of his time. When most professional composers were caught up in the serialist frenzy of the late 1950s, he was writing large orchestral works, chamber, and solo pieces that would explore the infinite lushness and variation in a SINGLE pitch.

The pieces on this album are quite diverse, and - as orchestral works written at the peak of his musical maturity - are unequalled as examples of his music. Quattro Pezzi was written in 1959, and in uncompromisingly radical for the time. Each of the four movements (as the subtitle implies) was written centered around a single pitch. While this may sound quite dull, it's unbelievable what sort of variation there is within such a constricted space. But Scelsi was the master of transitions on the microscopic scale: the quartertones, glissandi, trills, and all the timbral shifts, create such a dynamic world that each piece feels like it's seething with this nascent energy. Indeed, when I've talked about him with my colleagues at the university, some of us have expressed the (slightly fearful) realization that it's almost impossible to hold your ground in these piece: you get almost totally lost in this world he creates, and get so caught up in the tiny, moment-to-moment transitions and variations, that you forget almost everything around you. Like I said: when I was listening to this, I had to stop reading the liner notes. I couldn't do anything else but stare.

The pieces range from the very intimate Anahit (a violin solo with chamber orchestra) to the enormouse Uaxuctum (for orchestra, chorus, soloists, some ondes Martenot, and a few other instruments). Like the pieces themselves, the range of this disc is impressive, and I highly recommend it as a necessity for anybody interested in contemporary music that gets beyond the cliches of contsructs, architecture, formal process, and all the rest. Scelsi was a deep mystic, and the depth contained in any of his pieces certainly reflects that.

I hesitated to put 5 stars because, there is not really an other interpretation to compare to. At the same time, when you listen to it, it is so .. unconventional that it would be difficult to compare.

These pieces, along the Ligeti etudes by Aimard, and the 5th Quatuor (by Arditti) have been a recent, eyes opening discovery.

2 Months ago, I barely knew the name of Scelsi, I am not a scholar at all, and I get .. like immerged in this music that I did not even remotely thought 6 months ago I would even try to listen to.

In a review of the quatuors by Arditti, a reviewer noted that This is really less traditional music and more of an experience", It was about the 5th Quatuor. I would say the same for the music here.

A discovery of 2006 for me.