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Ryszard Alzin Gry warsza­wskie**

Włodz­imierz Żukows­ki Cool black / Bell­flower col­or (Kikyō-iro)*

Prze­mysłam Pacek, Bartłomiej Sutt  the Cave

Tomasz Siko­rs­ki Modus  

Edi­son Denisov Sonata 

Gor­don McPher­son  Lame God 

Alek­sander Nowak  Satin 

Aled Smith ex 

*world pre­miere

** world pre­miere with­in the pro­gramme “Com­po­si­tion­al Com­mis­sions”, imple­ment­ed by the Nation­al Insti­tute of Music and Dance”.

Łuc­ja Chyrzyńs­ka  flute

Adri­an Pal­mows­ki  clar­inet

Aga­ta Fran­cuz  vio­lin

Gabriela Graboń  vio­la

Michał Bień  cel­lo

Krzysztof Mady­da  accor­dion

Bartłomiej Sutt percussion

Julia Kurzyd­lak  conductor

Danu­ta Kasper­s­ka gui­tar*

guest:

Prze­mysław Pacek — synthesizers

*Free audi­tor of Akademia PRO

pro­gramme con­cept, text: Alek­san­dra Demowska-Madejska

Cool black / Bell­flower col­or (Kikyō-iro)

is a com­po­si­tion in which I explore the phe­nom­e­non of colour as an inde­pen­dent form of expres­sion. Divid­ed into two parts, the work refers to two colours cho­sen by me: Cool black (Pan­tone PMS 295 C) and Bell­flower col­or (Kikyō-iro) and to how I per­ceive them. Colours car­ry sub­tle asso­ci­a­tions of their own; they are rarely per­ma­nent­ly tied to spe­cif­ic ideas or objects. Only in a giv­en con­text do they reveal their mean­ing, open­ing a space for new inter­pre­ta­tions. Colours often appear in com­bi­na­tions — the con­trasts or sim­i­lar­i­ties between them cre­ate a spe­cif­ic char­ac­ter for the whole. In this case I am inter­est­ed in what hap­pens when a colour exists in iso­la­tion. I tried to look at the mean­ings these colours evoke when they stand alone, and at the var­i­ous asso­cia­tive paths that may arise from that. Is it pos­si­ble to dis­cern an inner nar­ra­tive of colour?

Włodz­imierz Żukows­ki is a com­pos­er, impro­vis­er, light design­er and mul­ti­me­dia artist whose main inter­ests cen­tre on musi­cal com­po­si­tion and the inter­dis­ci­pli­nary com­bi­na­tion of sound, light and inter­ac­tive media. His works have been per­formed by ensem­bles such as Ensem­ble Musik­Fab­rik, Neue Vocal­solis­ten Stuttgart and Chopin Uni­ver­si­ty Mod­ern Ensem­ble, and his instal­la­tions have been pre­sent­ed at Warsza­wska Jesień. Cur­rent­ly, togeth­er with Patryc­ja Kołodziejs­ka, he is work­ing on “sound­scape­walks” — an audio­vi­su­al instal­la­tion that explores the son­ic iden­ti­ty of War­saw. The project involves col­lect­ing field record­ings that become the basis for reflec­tion on the com­plex sound struc­ture of the city and its spe­cif­ic rhythm.

The title of the work alludes to the famous Gry weneck­ie by Witold Lutosławs­ki, whose 30th anniver­sary of death falls in the cur­rent year. I regard Lutosławski’s out­put as a kind of ide­al com­bi­na­tion of rig­or­ous think­ing about son­ic mate­r­i­al with musi­cal expres­sion, and analysing his works played no small role in my com­po­si­tion­al devel­op­ment. In Gry weneck­ie Lutosławs­ki applied his hall­mark idea of con­trolled aleatorism for the first time. He was also devel­op­ing a con­cept of build­ing musi­cal form based on antic­i­pat­ing lis­ten­ers’ expec­ta­tions, whose apoth­e­o­sis was the emer­gence of the so-called two-part form.

It is pre­cise­ly with this con­cept that I decid­ed to engage polem­i­cal­ly in my Gry warsza­wskie. In Lutosławski’s premise, the task of the com­pos­er is to plan in advance the moments of con­cen­tra­tion and dis­per­sal of the lis­ten­ers’ atten­tion. Lutosławs­ki derived his con­cept from the sonata alle­gros in Hayd­n’s out­put, who — in his view — con­scious­ly led his lis­ten­ers into a state of tedi­um in the devel­op­ment sec­tions of his sonatas or sym­phonies in order to reawak­en their curios­i­ty with the arrival of the reca­pit­u­la­tion. And so — abstract­ing from Lutosławski’s own spe­cif­ic ideas — I con­struct­ed my Gry warsza­wskie on the basis of pro­ject­ed lis­ten­er reac­tions to the unfold­ing of my work. While com­pos­ing, I kept in mind the oppo­si­tion of sev­er­al form-build­ing fac­tors, such as: new — famil­iar; expect­ed — unex­pect­ed; high — low den­si­ty of musi­cal mate­r­i­al; seri­ous­ness — lack of seri­ous­ness. I delib­er­ate­ly employed devices such as rep­e­ti­tions (lit­er­al or oth­er­wise) of cer­tain sequences, or indeed the afore­men­tioned stretch­es of monot­o­ny. For me this was also some­thing of a break­through, since most of my works are char­ac­terised by a brisk musi­cal momentum.

In a way sim­i­lar to Lutosławs­ki, I also explored in Gry warsza­wskie the relax­ing of rhyth­mic rela­tion­ships between instru­ments, includ­ing through the simul­ta­ne­ous use of sev­er­al dif­fer­ent tem­pos. In order to give the per­form­ers com­plet­ing the Young Acad­e­my organ­ised by Hash­tag Ensem­ble the oppor­tu­ni­ty to show­case their skills, I fre­quent­ly treat­ed indi­vid­ual instru­ments solois­ti­cal­ly, mak­ing use of the full spec­trum of their sound.

The Hash­tag Lab Con­tem­po­rary Music Space is co-financed by the Cap­i­tal City of War­saw.
The media patron of the Hash­tag Lab Con­tem­po­rary Music Space is POLMIC​.PL.