Performers: Zselyke Fehér-Flute, Sebestyén Kis-Violoncello, Regina Sebestyén-Lázár-piano
Artwork:  Péter Öllinger (opz_graphics) 
Recording: Aviso Studio, Hungary

Farewell To Childhood

The background of the piece is based on a very simple, but also a sad story. One night, I woke up feeling something tickling my arm, so I turned on the bedside lamp, and it turned out to be a tiny spider. I must admit, it was neither a pleasant feeling nor sight, and I quickly brushed it off, but unfortunately, it didn’t survive. I usually usher spiders and other insects out through the window, but in a moment of impulse, I ended a life. After that, I couldn’t fall back asleep, and a Reich-like repetitive melody kept playing in my head. That's how 'INsomnia' was born, my own "Spider-Man" story.

INsomnia

Diana Rotaru - BULZ (2024) for solo piano

The work was written for the 2024 "George Enescu" International Competition. The wonderful Tatiana Dorokhova won the Prize for the best performance of the imposed work. This is the live recording of the performance @ the National University of Music in Bucharest, during the 2nd round of the competition (18.09.24). 

The title "Bulz" (ball, bundle, clot, clod) was chosen both for the pleasure of its sound and to signal some essential coordinates of this work. "Bulz" is primarily a condensed lump of sounds: whether a chromatic, diatonic or pentatonic cluster, or a triad – a bundle of thirds drawn from the essential arsenal of the tonal system and decontextualized by it –, or a bunch of multiple grace notes, or a trill, or a register implosion. Then, the "bulz" is a lump of influences, stylistic features of beloved musics, passed through the composer and passionately baked over low heat: a Debussy lump, a Bartók bite, a Messiaen bundle, a Dediu cluster. Finally, the "bulz" is a delicious, specifically Romanian dish, which determines the form of the work: a Balkan keyboard, kneaded and minced, placed into a jazz crust.

Many thanks to Tatiana and to the "Enescu" Competition for the rights of publicly posting this work.

photo credit: https://concurs.festivalenescu.ro/

BULZ - Tatiana Dorokhova, piano

Performers: Yasmin Rublin, Norbert Halmi (Violin), Katarina Gregorin (Viola), Emilia Spasojevic (Cello)

the dawn plays its melody on the crickets

VELVET ALICE (2021) for piano and live electronics 
Written for and performed by "contemporary piano currents"
Junko Yamamoto - piano
Oliver Sascha Frick - electronics

The title of the work alludes to its two starting points: Lewis Carroll’s „Alice in Wonderland” and the wonderland of visual artist Pipilotti Rist, especially her installation from 2009, „Yoghurt on Skin- Velvet on TV”. The piano functions as a toy / toy-piano / ticket to a magical, parallel universe hidden in the most prosaic things.

Live rec from the International MERIDIAN Festival - "ATLAS"
Nov. 10th 2022 - The "Enescu" Hall of N.U.M.B.

Funded through Goethe Institut - Virtual Partner Residency


Velvet Alice

"monster under my bed" (2024) 
Written for and performed by Adriana Toacsen,
within the project "An elephant in the city" - IDEILAGRAM Association

one scared elephant, one whisky glass without whisky, one bed-piano and one monstrous spider - in this miniature adventure on/in/under the piano

mastered by Florentina Herghelegiu

INsomnia

Regi Sebestyén-Lázár