WORLD PREMIERE
10/20/2013, Donaueschinger, All. By soloists trio of the Ensemble Recherche (Martin Fahlenbock, flutes - Jaime González, oboe - Shizuyo Oka, clarinets) and the SWR - Sinfonie Orchester Baden-Baden & Freiburg, dir. François-Xavier Roth.

NOTES
Kerguelen is the name of an underwater volcanic land almost entirely covered by the Indian Ocean, located at approximately 3 000 km south of Australia. Only a small portion emerges from the surface of the ocean, thus forming the archipelago of the same name.

The choice of this title results from the fact that this geological formation described perfectly the relation established between the soloists’ trio and the orchestra. The dialectical relation characterizing the concerting music from its beginnings to our days is here avoided. On the contrary, a relation where the trio is detached from the orchestra is required, playing the “tutti” like a “plain” on which the musical material is based.

By establishing this relation, one fully determines the choice of the musical material.

The “acrobatic” virtuosity usually associated with the form of the concerto is replaced here by a less apparent virtuosity which lacks a certain theatrical aspect. In Kerguelen, virtuosity requires a great ability in control of the emission of the sound by the airstream. Thus, the materials are closely related to the instruments, thought and designed for them.

This manner of working comes from a concept which I call the “micro-instrumentation” or “generating instrumentation”. This concept tends to explore intermediate spaces which exist in a microscopic way (in terms of tone and timbre), between the conventional sounds for which these instruments were created. And these microscopic materials resulting from a process of research of these instruments become generating structures since, in a certain manner, they impose their own temporality.

In the case of Kerguelen, this process of research was developed in collaboration with the soloists’ trio of the “Ensemble Recherche of Freiburg”.

The trio is treated like a single instrument, as homogeneous as possible. And it is obviously a consequence of this escape of the dialectical relation. In fact, there are not three soloists but only one and single polyphonic formation divided into three, each one of it being treated in a multi-phonic way. This multi-phonic approach is fully incarnated in the “cadenza”, always far away from the traditional concept, not only for selected material but also for the explicit linearity which tends to explore all the intermediate spaces found thanks to the techniques of micro-instrumentation.

Work nominated in 2025
for the 2027 Musical Composition Prize

There are three dates that take on special significance in the composition of this concerto for piano and orchestra, beyond the composition itself.

In 2013, I began a close collaboration with pianist Florian Hölscher, for whom I ended up writing a cycle of six solo piano works entitled Erinerungsspuren. This new piece is conceived as an extension of that collaboration, this time within the realm of concertante music.

In 1965, Giacinto Scelsi composed what I consider to be one of his most solid works: Anahit. The first time I heard this piece, written for violin and 18 instruments, I was deeply impressed by its boldness in establishing the relationship between soloist and tutti. This relationship emerged from the musical material itself, rather than from a pre-established structure, and transcended the dialectical relationship that had shaped Western music since the mid-Baroque and Classical periods.

In 1736, the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler solved a problem that had been presented to him by the mayor of the city of Königsberg. The problem consisted of how to connect the city’s four areas—separated by the Pregel River and crossed by seven bridges—so that each bridge would be crossed only once, returning at the end to the starting point. The problem had no solution, but through this, and by generalizing the negative outcome, Euler developed graph theory, which became the first foundation of mathematical topology.

 

The use of the so-called Eulerian circuits is one of the compositional foundations of this concerto in three movements. In the first and third movements, the soloist plays from the keyboard, while in the second, they also perform inside the piano.

In the first movement (Zyklen), following graph theory, several Eulerian circuits were created to determine the sequence of materials, their temporality, and to regulate the various types of relationships established between the soloist and the orchestra. All of this was done with the intention of exploring non-dialectical relationships, without abandoning alternation. Some of these relationships are drawn from nature (epibiotic, mimetic, propulsive), while others come from purely musical practices (heterophonic or acoustical).

In the second movement (Ritual – Discantus – Chorale), the piano almost completely loses its identity as a soloist, stripped of any trace of nineteenth-century virtuosity, giving way instead to a concept of expanded chamber music. This movement is divided into three sections. The first unfolds as a ritual in which an articulated, incisive, percussive gesture becomes the trigger for "virtual resonances" that evolve over time. The second presents a discantus over a buried Gregorian melody (Media vita), which had already appeared—albeit subtly—in the first movement. Finally, it leads into a kind of chorale created through topological transformations of an initial chord.

The use of Eulerian circuits reappears in the third movement, although in this case it is more related to issues of harmony and pitch distribution, but also, at certain moments, to musical material—for instance, in the two cadenzas the soloist performs over a static orchestral sound. The soloist’s writing evolves from an idea that at times recalls the harpsichord, toward a denser sound closer to the textural and gestural, passing through moments of extreme polyphonic complexity.

Although the three movements present highly contrasting sound territories, they are interconnected. The idea of ritual gesture in the second movement had already appeared—though in a different form—in the first, and returns again in the third. The aforementioned Gregorian melody Media vita from the first movement is transferred to the second; chordal structures from the first reappear in the third, as do certain musical materials from the first that are transformed into secondary gestures in the final movement. In this way, an intricate circuit of temporal relationships and information is established, linking the three movements in a manner analogous to the way Eulerian circuits connect nodes.

The orchestral writing is far from being a mere accompaniment to the soloist or a simple temporally shifted replication. Frequently, one—either the soloist or the orchestra—emerges from the other, sometimes reinforcing, sometimes highlighting, sometimes sliding past, and sometimes contradicting. Alternations using the same material lose importance in relation to the traditional concept of a concerto and gain meaning when the orchestra expands the acoustic entity presented by the piano.

This concerto is the result of an intention to reflect on the different forms of relationship between the soloist and the tutti, which are ultimately a translation of the relationship between the individual and society.

 

Alberto Posadas