Curiosidades boulezianas....

Yo soy gran defensor del Salonen director, me gusta muchísimo, de hecho, su Mahler, exceptuando DLvdE, me parece soberbio, con una Cuarta y una Tercera excepcionales, una Novena que abre caminos y una muy buena Sexta. De hecho, creo que el Mahler de Salonen se ha caracterizado por abrir nuevos caminos, antes nadie interpretaba la Tercera de esa manera, luego de él no pocos han seguido su huella, léase Zinman, Nott... Su Stravinsky, su Debussy, su Nielsen, Lutoslawski, Bartok, Schoenberg... Yo al Salonen compositor tampoco lo conocía, hoy le he escuchado su concierto para violín y Nyx, no es la música de Salonen una que siga los derroteros contemporáneos de la saturación, la música concreta instrumental o las derivaciones de la música estocástica.

Nyx, su última obra existente en disco (compuesta en 2010), la acabo de escuchar ahora, la obra va creciendo y ganando en complejidad y belleza, con una gama de color increíble, de textura, y una interesante densidad orquestal.... Tengo que escucharla de nuevo, darle unas vueltas. Te pongo por aquí un texto explicativo y el YouTube en donde se puede escuchar completa:

From Salonen's own notes regarding the piece:
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Nyx is my return to the genre of pure orchestral music since Helix (2005). It employs a large orchestra, and has exposed concertante parts for solo clarinet and the horn section.

Rather than utilizing the principle of continuous variation of material, as is the case mostly in my recent music, Nyx behaves rather differently. Its themes and ideas essentially keep their properties throughout the piece while the environment surrounding them keeps changing constantly. Mere whispers grow into roar; an intimate line of the solo clarinet becomes a slowly breathing broad melody of tutti strings at the end of the 18-minute arch of Nyx.

I set myself a particular challenge when starting the composition process, something I hadn't done earlier: to write complex counterpoint for almost one hundred musicians playing tutti at full throttle without losing clarity of the different layers and lines; something that Strauss and Mahler so perfectly mastered. Not an easy task, but a fascinating one. I leave it to the listener to judge how well I succeeded.

Nyx is a shadowy figure in Greek mythology. At the very beginning of everything there's a big mass of dark stuff called Chaos, out of which comes Gaia or Ge, the Earth, who gives birth (spontaneously!) to Uranus, the starry heaven, and Pontus, the sea. Nyx (also sometimes known as Nox) is supposed to have been another child of Gaia, along with Erebus. The union of Nyx and Erebus produces Day.

Another version says that Cronos (as Time) was there from the beginning. Chaos came from Time. Nyx was present as a sort of membrane surrounding Chaos, which had Phanes (Light) at its centre. The union of Nyx with Phanes produced Heaven & Earth.

She is an extremely nebulous figure altogether; we have no sense of her character or personality. It is this very quality that has long fascinated me and made me decide to name my new orchestral piece after her.

I'm not trying to describe this mythical goddess in any precise way musically. However, the almost constant flickering and rapid changing of textures and moods as well as a certain elusive character of many musical gestures may well be related to the subject.

I have always enjoyed the unrivalled dynamic range of a large symphony orchestra, but Nyx seems to take a somewhat new direction from my earlier orchestral music: there are many very delicate and light textures, chiaroscuro instead of details bathing in clear direct sunlight. I guess this is symptomatic of growing older as we realize there are no simple truths, no pure blacks and whites but an endless variety of half shades.

Lo mejor que le he escuchado a Pierino con la Orquesta del Conservatorio de Moscú es una Séptima de Shostakovich editada por el sello norteamericano Tom Byron Classics, pedazo de Leningrado!