Capriccia

Capriccio husle/violin solo 2020

A Luca Marenzio pays homage to the Renaissance composer Luca Marenzio, the author of the beautiful madrigal Solo e pensoso i piú deserti campi, with its fascinating, almost conceptually patient chromatic rise (and incomplete fall) of one of the voices in the beginning of the piece. As a listener, I always felt a bit sorry that this wonderful hypnotic texture passes by so quickly. My homage was therefore (partially) written as a peaceful conversation about music without the limits of time and history. In my piece, the chromaticity is replaced by a "scale" made of the natural harmonics of the cello in the range of two octaves. Their "rise" and "fall" form the backbone of the form. Marenzio's florid counterpoint (by the way, wonderful!) was replaced with a calm and homophonic three-voice texture.

First performance: ensemble Lichtzwang (CZ)

A Luca Marenzio live 21 - 10 - 2018

5 string violin "Milanolo" and string orchestra

I composed Struny: steny, zhluky, sny for Milan Paľa. You can already guess something about the music from its title but it is the music itself which will have to take care of the most important part, including the musicians turning this dreamworld into the realm of sound. I would like to thank them in advance for their effort and needed enthusiasm.

released at Pavlík records:
https://www.pavlikrecords.sk/shop/4-milanolo-concertos-2cd-audio

5 string violin - Milan Pala
conductor - Marian Lejava
strings - Ensemble Opera Diversa

Project 4 MILANOLO CONCERTOS is a unique combination of four individual composers with their well-defined visions of music language and instrument that was built specifically for my artistic needs. After five years this vision has materialized into this CD and the first concerto works in the history for the only instrument of its kind and modern quality are now reality.

4 MILANOLO concertos

Struny: steny, zhluky, sny 2016 (rev. 2018)

live from World Music Days festival 2019 
Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, conductor Risto Joost

Recorded by Klassikaraadio / Estonian Public Broadcasting
Sound engineer: Tanel Klesment

Struny steny zhluky sny live (string orchestra without soloist)

first performance 19 - 6-2018

Modré kvety

I have been writing this piece while re-reading Raymond Queneau’s novel Les Fleurs Bleues (Modré kvety in Slovak). This book is, among other things, about daydreaming. This piece is, among other things, about daydreaming, too.

Modré Kvety oboe-cello-piano 2018

Concert Bratislava, 19 - 12 - 2019, ensemble Ricercata

Žiadba violin version Milan Paľa

Kvarteto 2017 (with cimbalom)

In 2011 the German ensemble Streichseptett Heiligenberg organised a portrait concert dedicated to my teacher Martin Smolka. He very kindly suggested to them that I, as his student at that time, should also write a piece for them for that occasion.

At the beginning there was a tempting opportunity to write a piece for a very unusual string septet: descant (a kind of high violin), 2 violins, viola, tenor (or high) cello, cello and double bass with an added low string. It was also inspiring that each instrument was made from the wood of a different tree. The tempting aspect for me at that time was mainly the pairing of "usual" with "unusual" instruments.

In those years I was focused on monochromatic instrumentation and was exploring clusters of different densities (writing rather utopian pieces, which are hard to perform due to their instrumentation). Within these clusters some simpler elements are usually hidden, which for me form some of the basic elements of music (a simple triad, or a fragment of a melody) which have to be “excavated”.

In Septett I “hid” simple triads (g-minor, d-minor) which gradually become clearer within the musical process. These chords slowly become slightly out of tune because of the natural harmonics (mostly 7th) which replace the more "well-tuned" pitches. Amongst other things, I also had on my mind the velvety sound of the fujara (a traditional Slovak flute).

In 2015 I rewrote the piece for standard instruments for the Ostrava Days festival. I wanted to use two different kinds of mutes (a standard, and a practice metal mute) and thus divide the ensemble into two slightly different trios (vn-vla-vc) with the unmuted doublebass situated inbetween. But during the rehearsals fascinanting things started to happen: the muted instruments were reluctant to spread the rainbows of different spectra, which clash into each other during the piece, especially in the opening texture. So finally the musicians played without mutes, even in the softest dynamics.

The composition is dedicated to Gérard Grisey, for his enthusiasm for working with unclear roles of individual parameters. However, I must also thank Martin Smolka, both for the wonderful suggestion that I should write this piece, and later for the surprise he gave me by sending to me Bohumil Hrabal's Tender Barbarian at exactly the most decisive moment of composing the piece.

Adrian Demoč

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