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DAVID MOLINER ∙ PHYSICAL SOUND »It was a really pleasant surprise to encounter the music of David Moliner while preparing this CD. I discovered an artist who combined mastery of his métier with a flair for sound and a communicative patter connects to give expression to his music.« From my very first meeting with David Moliner in 2019, a word emerged that implied everything that the Spanish poet José Ángel Valente had in mind shortly before his death Palabra and Materia demanded: expression. Moliner's world of sound is inconceivable without expression, it arises directly from it. Sound becomes an experience of the senses, both for the performer and for the listener. Sound is transformed into matter by the expressiveness of the body, in a kind of »perfect melos« of classical Greece, the union of instrument and voice. Sound, action and thought become one. No doubt Moliner derives this union of the senses from the transience of the sounds of percussion instruments and from his preoccupation with the music of Xenakis, a composer whose work devoted himself to exploring rhythm. Perhaps that is exactly what connects the tracks on this CD: the transformation of sound into matter. During the Fantasy about the piano for prepared piano, both the hand tapping of the piano keyboard and the pedal noise are part of a whole in which the attentive ear can distinguish between meter and the pulse of the musical discourse. One cannot hear this piece without thinking of John Cage, who coined the term »prepared piano«, but one will also remember the Hungarian composers Béla Bartók and György Ligeti and their important contribution to the piano as a percussion instrument. The duo What is coordinated! Ain't coordinated... (Two little birds) for saxophone and flute is based on the Freudian concept of the struggle between the conscious and the unconscious. The body represents the unconscious, in this case through the »kicks«, the unintended movements of the foot. The unconscious triumphs over the conscious represented by the trills of the flute and saxophone imitating the trill of two sad birds. The struggle between the sound of the rapid figurations of the two wind instruments and the kicking of the feet goes in favor of the latter. In the last 15 seconds of the duet, the performers fall to the ground, the foot annihilates consciousness. The trio The sound of the earth is a composition for bassoon, cello and percussion in which the instruments mix and combine into a »super instrument« with which Moliner wants to modulate the air and explore the terrain of harmonic sounds and the voice as theatrical expression, the aforementioned »perfect melos «, which also forms the basis of Wagner's idea of a total work of art. Morton Feldman's influence is also evident, as is José Ángel Valente's call to go beyond the word, to turn it into matter. Emotion is the basis of String Quartet III with the title haunting sentence. This haunting sentence expresses a constant tension that will not be resolved. David Moliner composed this work during the coronavirus lockdown of 2020. Restlessness is the escape route to new horizons, an escape from an undesirable reality in a frenzy of emotion. The escape ends with harmonic sounds of the strings – interspersed with the whistling of a human voice – abruptly interrupting the string sounds. The ensemble work Structure I “…eros sur le bleu” arises from the beauty of the color blue, a poetic idea that finds its expression in very sonorous chords reminiscent of Gustav Mahler Titan Symphony or to the Arnold Schoenbergs Colors-Chord remembered. Another influence is Morton Feldman's use of timbre in Coptic Light. Structure I is a semantic metaphor that apprehends the color blue from a theatrical perspective, like a painting about to break out of its frame, a sounding »trompe l'oeil«. David Moliner has the performers whistle and whisper to achieve this theatricality. Each of the four Solos is dedicated to another percussion instrument: vibraphone, marimba, body percussion and snare drum. The transience and incomprehensibility of the percussive sounds inspired David Moliner to work with sound compressions that overstimulate the senses. After exploring the body in solo III is in Solo IV added the composer's voice reciting the following Spanish text: »Un deseo cruza mi interior y mi mente se convierte en susurro. En el fondo de mi hechizado ardor habita una corriente de humana muerte. ¡Quién soy yo para creer semejante negror! ¿Dónde habita mi cordura? No existe carta alguna más que la humana suerte. En el fondo permanece inerte sin gana alguna de hablar. ¡Y mil llamas quemarán mi flujo y mil llamas lo volverán a quemar hasta que los ciervos se escondan en un orgasmo frío y sin pecar!« (David Moliner) [»A desire penetrates my soul and my spirit becomes a whisper. In the depths of my enchanted passion lies a river of human death. Who am I to believe in such darkness? Where is my sanity? There is no preordained path, only human destiny. Deep down, it remains inert, unwilling to speak. And a thousand flames will burn up my stream, and a thousand flames will burn it up again, until the stags hide in a cold, sinless orgasm!"] In one of his numerous scholia, the Colombian philosopher Nicolás Gómez Dávila asserted that "the impact of a single verse is enough to explode the rubble in which the soul is buried". The essence of David Moliner's work, as we have shown, is full expression. In doing so, he tries to achieve an effect, to forge the sonorous verse that touches the soul - that of the interpreter as well as that of the listener. Michael Thallium program: David moliner (* 1991) [01] Fantasy about the piano for prepared piano (2012, rev. 2020) 06:27 [02] Solo I “Echo perpétuel d'un F pure…” for vibraphone solo (2016) 04:02 [03] What is coordinated! Ain't coordinated... (Two little birds) Duo for flute and soprano saxophone (2015) 07:47 [04] Solo II “Echo fluctuant d'un D sensuel…” for marimba solo (2017) 02:13 [05] Trio “The Sound of the Earth” for bassoon, cello and percussion (2015) 06:24 [06] solo III “points de penetration du t]k]” for body percussion (2018) 02:00 [07] Haunting Movement (String Quartet III) (2020) 08:30 [08] Solo IV “…flux orgasmique de desire…” for snare drum (2020) 04:15 [09] Structure I “...eros sur le bleu” for ensemble (2016) 09:39 Total playing time: 51:24
David moliner percussion plural ensemble Fabian Panisello conductor |