'Elf citroenen in een bad met chloor' by Reza Namavar @Bruckner Casco 2024

Описание: Bruckner and Reza believe in big sound alongside small sound, creating extreme contrast by playing the highest instruments higher and the lowest lower.

New piece by Reza: Bruckner and Reza both build an enormous piece with little thematic material; such a theme is unrecognizably distorted, stretched, and reversed in their music. Both believe that there can only be a big sound if there is also a very small sound, and play the highest instruments sometimes even higher and the lowest even lower to create extreme contrast.

Reza on his new composition:
‘Bruckner is the man of the grand sound. He was often criticized for his orchestral doublings (multiple instruments playing the same thing), but this can also be viewed differently: Isn’t a massive sound (tutti: everyone playing) the ultimate end of orchestral density? He achieves his grand sound through 1. doublings, 2. tutti, and 3. stretching the range, the ‘ambitus’. The latter means making the highest instruments play higher and the lowest instruments play lower. I want to compose four movements, like the third symphony, that deal with this grand sound versus a very small sound, because my idea is that you only notice grand sound if there is also small sound.’

'The first movement I will compose is a dialogue between tutti and solo, the second movement is for various solos, the third movement is a soft tutti, and the final movement is a very sharp dynamic contrast between solo and tutti, which I will enhance by extending the range (higher highs, lower lows) and having the solo/tutti contrast sometimes change measure by measure. This way, the piece will give the impression of working towards something. It will be a piece where foreground and background sharply contrast and interchange more frequently. Also, what strikes me about the third symphony is the sparseness of material; that is, building a huge piece with minimal thematic material. This suits me because that’s how I was trained at the conservatory with Louis Andriessen.’

‘During the corona period, I reviewed all of Antonio Vivaldi’s concertos and realized that he is also a composer who achieves a lot with few means. Such composers are very suitable for me to reflect upon. In other words, a painting with only red and white stands out more than a painting with all colours. By dosing and developing your ideas (instead of simply placing them side by side), the piece gains enormous unity and character. I want to maintain this focus per movement, achieved through few ideas, which I hope will sharpen the technique of what I tried to explain earlier (foreground and background, tutti/solo, etc.). This also explains my choice for the relatively large instrumentation of my new work because it allows me to make and develop the foreground and background play even more clearly. The symphony contains long notes (chords), accompaniment figures, and short motifs, and that’s essentially it. I plan to roughly adopt this pattern; they are excellent building blocks for a work.’

New European Ensemble

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