ROSENFINGER VIRTUAL
RECITAL n. 3
SHRINES OF MEMORY
Six
Piano Works by FABIO GRASSO
FABIO
GRASSO, PIANO
It's in the world of dream that the latent memories
are most powerfully stirred up, often in surprising aleatory sequences. The
structure of Schumann's Blumenstück
op. 19 ("flowery piece") consists of several "petals",
whose thematic interrelations are such as to create motivic reminiscences at
various time distances. Here this idea is projected into the oneiric dimension
of a "flowery dream", even in virtue of an alea-based section and of
the transfigured recollection of the main theme of Schumann's work.
The compositional proceedings of these early
aphoristic sketches include more or less varied repetitions of short
rhythmic-melodic modules, like flashing recalls that punctuate the
microstructures of the work. Moreover the allusion to Ravel's Le Gibet (from Gaspard de la nuit) emphasizes the mnestic connotation of the last
meditative movement.
Microforme
was
premiered by the composer in Berlin (summer 1993) at the end of a piano stage.
During this stay the author was particularly impressed by the visit of Pergamon
Museum. So, 17 years later, on the occasion of a recital at the Berlin Theater
BKA, for which a new piano piece was needed, the memory of the majestic
Hellenistic monuments offered the inspiration for this work, a sort of mystical
"mnestic tour" around the Temple, imagining to let the ancient voices
of the creatures portrayed by the friezes arise from the silence. It will be
easy to recognize, in the final part, an allusion to Debussy's Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut, from
the second book of the Images.
Les alcyons de Corinthe (2007)
Another treasure of the Hellenistic culture inspires
this composition, the famous Antipatros's lament for Corinth, whose desolate
sea seems to echo with the spectral voices of the halcyons, only faint memory
of Greece's irremediably lost freedom.
Once again a memory of ancient Greece shapes the last
of the seven movements of this arduous polyptych, the culminating point of the
conceptual route described by the work. Widespread, hieratically flowing
harmonic combinations seem to reflect, even in the unusually cryptic
displacement on the score, the distant, enigmatic Delphi's oracular responses.
According to Plutarch's description of the Delphic
symbology, centred on the "5" - that is the "epsilon",
fifth letter of the alphabet - in close relation with the Sun's position, the
chordal flow (also passing through a masked quotation of Debussy's Danseuses de Delphes) is exclusively
organized by quintuplets and gravitates around the "G" - that is the
SOL in Latin notation, fifth note of the scale, and homonymous of the Latin
word for Sun.
A veil of resignation seems to mantle these ethereal
ataraxic motions, which will leave hopelessly unanswered the timid questions
murmured by a secret voice, vainly looking, during the whole cycle, for some
escape from the solipsism that dominates the entire meditative route of the
piece, since the first movement, whose title Monadi is drawn from Leibniz's terminology.
Just a reminiscence of the beginning of Monadi opens the conclusive section of
the 7th movement, and acts as a signal of the final withdrawal into a totally
self-referential world, that frustrates any rational or irrational attempt to
find spaces of dialogue (the speculative counterpoints, the invocations and the
aleatory spasms of the intermediate movements) and affirms the definitive
triumph of the solitude.
La danza segreta di
Maeve (1999)
The last stage of our route has a quite different
background: we move to Ireland, transported by the verses of William Butler
Yeats (Nobel Prize in Literature 1923). In his drama The Countess Cathleen Yeats evokes the mythic figure of the Queen
Maeve, probably a sort of Irish version of the Shakespearian Fairy Queen Mab.
The video below shows the text excerpt which perfectly explains the relation
between this fascinating tale and the shrines of memory explored by our concert
programme.
We also remark that it is possible to notice a
relationship between the melodic profile of the beginning of the section E
(starting from a long repeated note "E" at the end of the section D)
and some fragments of the Suite's
movements Monodia and Intermezzo, whose gravitational centre
is the same note "E". This relationship can be considered as a
musical reflection of the processes of investigation of the latent memories, so
relevant in Yeats's text.
Thanks for visiting this page and enjoy the final
listening.