Composed by Anibal Vidal
Lyrics by Lucie Cure
Performed by Lucie Cure

Musically, Second Souffle is divided in 2 sections and one coda. In the first section, the electronics gradually incorporate notes and descend in register to the very low bottom notes of a piano, creating a constant cluster of notes which assimilates air or blowing wind. In the second section, this air effect now is done with voice sounds, repeating same process of first section, but this time voices accumulate on top of each other until they create a white noise effect by the end of the section. The coda is left for solo voice as a journey from creating air effects and transforming that materiality into organic sound as the human voice.

Anibal Vidal - Second Souffle (Lyrics by Lucie Cure)

Performed by Henriette Poos.

A Binary Sunset is inspired by the twilight colours produced at dusk which embrace with such a beautiful drama and mystery the vast immensity of the emptiness of the desert landscapes of Moon Valley, located in the Atacama desert in Chile, acquiring a similar aspect to Tatooine, fictional desert planet part of the Star Wars universe.

Anibal Vidal - A Binary Sunset for solo harp

Performed by the Royal College of Music Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Toby Purser at Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall in London, May 2022.

The idea for Gliding Murmuration came to me in the winter of 2021, when visiting Brighton. It is very usual to see starling birds murmurations flying in the sky at this time of the year. The amazement it provoked me to watch the ever-changing patterns that are created by hundreds of birds flying together, expanding and contracting with such a natural fluidity made me wonder if one could establish similarities between the different aspects of these movements and a musical narrative.

This piece explores the elasticity of music material and how it can be presented in different time scales. This material consists of little repetitive rhythmic cells that proliferate in small instruments group until they overtake the whole orchestra, generating a sonorous “whole”. Sometimes this material dissolves itself before reaching a consolidated energetic momentum, some other times it reaches a new arrival point and well-constituted music state; but always through a constant and gradual organic transformation.

Anibal Vidal - Gliding Murmuration for orchestra

Liquidity for Flute, Clarinet in Bb, Percussion, Piano, Violin and Cello.

Performed by Synchronos Ensemble, Zabreb 2023.

Anibal Vidal - Liquidity for ensemble

Created as part of Cheltenham Music Festival Composer Academy 2023. Performed by The Carice Singers, directed by George Parris.

Just A Déjà Vu Cariño

Performed by Cikada ensemble and conducted by Christian Eggen.
Oslo, June 2023.

Tonada is a folk music that originated in Spain and later every country in South America developed its own style. In Chile, it’s usually characterised by slow-moving melodies, in an almost meditative state.

In this work, I wanted to recreate the essence of the rural landscape, which is where this music comes from. The countryside holds a deep personal connection for me as I spent most of my childhood summers visiting my grandmother there. These experiences left vivid and resonant sounding memories in my mind: the noise of a rattling roof, the wind from afar, Tonada music being played in the house next door.

The drama of this composition draws inspiration from the poetry of the renowned Chilean poet, Jorge Teillier. Teillier was known for his nostalgic expressions, lamenting how the world of the countryside, that old world, the one that the generation of my grandparents was the last one to truly and fully live -and which I felt lucky to have caught a glimpse of it during my childhood- how that lifestyle was gradually threatened, fading and replaced by the relentless advance of the modern world during the XX century.

Tonada

MI orchestra
Conducted by Alvin Arumugam
October 2023
Singapore

Gliding Murmuration

Britten Sinfonia
Milton Court, Barbican Centre
April 2024

With this work, I’m starting a series of pieces called ‘Invocations’ in which I aim to explore how the human voice can emerge organically from within the ensemble and be portrayed in different facets because I’m interested in contrasting the human quality of uniqueness and rawness of voice against music instruments.

Each invocation is dedicated to something or someone. This first one is dedicated to the Hermit, which is my major arcana archetype in the Tarot according to Numerology. Whether we believe it or not, I’m particularly attracted to its poetic and symbolic dimension, as in the one who needs to descend into darkness and step into the unknown withdrawing themselves from noise. Within this solitude, they need to manage to light up their own lantern, to get to the essence of things and emerge again from silence with their blood transformed into the oil of their own lantern.

Invocación n.1: A mi arcano, El Ermitaño

String quartet no.1 "Camanchaca" - Album Cuerdas y Rugidos

Brompton Quartet
Rercoding, mixing and mastering by Ignacio Lusardi
Artwork by Ignacio Perez

The word camanchaca refers to a dense, cold, and persistent type of fog that appears along the seashore on the coast of Chile. The word originates from the native Aymara language and translates to "darkness" due to its density.

This composition is the sound-story of things I have witnessed from the view I had at home as I grew up, overlooking the sea in a tiny fishing village on the coast of Chile. From this spot, I would see the camanchaca fogs in the mornings appearing in the bay, overtaking the whole landscape, sometimes so dense that it felt like being inside a cloud. Through this same window, I have seen perhaps a hundred beautiful full yellow moons reflecting on the sea, and images of genuine peace etched into my memory since childhood.

At the same time, alongside these scenes, I have also witnessed disaster and violence, such as the earthquake and tsunami that occurred on the night of February 27, 2010, in Chile, which had a magnitude of 8.8 on the Mw scale. It was a full moon, and I have this "Hollywood-esque" image in my mind of witnessing a gigantic wave towering above a five-story building.

But little is spoken about the sounding imagery associated with earthquakes and tsunamis, such as the shaking of objects, the crunching of walls, and the low roar that emanates from the ground before an aftershock. From this particular experience, the sounds of wooden fishing boats smashing against the breakwater wall, which echoed throughout the whole night, remained vividly in my mind.

Camanchaca

1. Camanchaca String Quartet No.1 (15’41’’) Brompton Quartet

2. Unboxing a Music Box String quartet No.2 (10’34’’) Alkyona Quartet

3. Three Chants for assembling an Oboe for Oboe & string quartet (15’19’’)
Movement I - Body (04’55’’) 
Movement II - Reed (05’09’’) 
Movement III - Oboe (05’14’’)
José Luis Urquieta & ensamble f(r)actura Conducted by Jesús Rodriguez
___________

Tracks 1 and 2 recorded by Ignacio Lusardi. Cheltenham, UK, 2023. Track 3 recorded at Estudio Azul. Viña del Mar, Chile, 2024.
Mixing & mastering by Ignacio Lusardi
Filmed by Vaiva Botyriūtė
Artwork by Ignacio Perez
Brompton Quartet: Maja Horvat, Mee-Hyun Esther Park, Edward Keenan and Wallis Power.
Alkyona Quartet: Emma Purslow, Marike Kruup, Claire Newton & Jobine Siekman. ensemble f(r)ractura: Enrique Schadenberg, Jesús Rodríguez, Fabiola Paulsen, Catalina Droguett, Melissa Collao and Francisco Palacios.
Thanks to Diana Roberts, Naomi Belshaw, Mira Marton, Jason Acero, Dominic Bolton, José Luis Urquieta and Enrique Schadenberg for their invaluable help and advice.
Grateful thanks to Penny Wright for her encouragement and support.
This project has been generously supported by the PRS Foundation, The Robert Anderson Trust and RCM Accelerate.
Works composed in the UK, 2023

Three Chants For Assembling An Oboe III. Oboe

Three Chants For Assembling An Oboe II. Reed

Three Chants For Assembling An Oboe I. Body

Unboxing A Music Box

Britten Sinfonia
Soloist Imogen Whitehead
Conducted by Tom Fetherstonehaugh
St Giles Cripplegate, London. 
November 2024

recording and mix: Myles Eastwood
photo credit: Dimitri Djuric

Invocación n.2: A Kintsugi Resurrection for Trumpet and ensemble is, in a way, a piece with a highly theatrical character exploring drama, oddness and quirkiness. It features a unique sound palette, extensively using toy instruments, objects, and small percussion to broaden the sonority of the ensemble.

At its core, the piece thematically explores the idea of resurrection in a reimagined way. Rather than presenting resurrection as a singular event, I approach it as a process—a journey of disintegration and reconstruction. It’s about breaking things down, dismantling them into fragments, and then carefully reassembling them in a way that breathes new life, emphasizing a different shade of beauty that could emerge from transformation.

Musically, Invocación n.2 incorporates elements from two iconic works: Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto, a foundational piece within the trumpet repertoire, and Mahler’s Second Symphony, known as the "Resurrection" Symphony. These works were chosen not only for their significance but also for their thematic resonance. However, rather than quoting these works directly, I deconstruct their musical material, cutting them into small cells. These cells are then looped, fragmented, and stitched back together, creating a new patchwork of sound.

The compositional approach is similar to assembling the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, where each fragment finds a new place within the whole. It is also akin to the Japanese art of Kintsugi, where broken pottery is repaired with gold, making the cracks something to display with dignity rather than something to hide. Similarly, in this piece, my “thesis” is that the act of reconstruction becomes central to the idea of resurrection. It is through the process of rebuilding, after things fall apart, that true renewal and transformation occur.

Anibal Vidal

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