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ULTIMA RARA  - the Bussotti-Circle(2018)

■ Mai Fukasawa (*)

                Declarative Belfry – für Sologitarre

■ Hidehiko Hinohara (*1964)

                Il Cigno Pesarese  – für Sologitarre

■ Luigi Esposito (*1962)

                wanted – für Gitarre und Stimme

■ Hidehiko Hinohara (*1964)

                Il Cigno Pesarese  – für Sologitarre

■ Sylvano Bussotti (*1931)

                Ermafrodito – für Gitarre und Stimme

■ Sylvano Bussotti

                Ultima Rara – für Gitarre und Stimme

"ULTIMA RARA - The Bussotti-Circle" is the title of the CD dedicated to one of the most interesting and innovative contemporary artists, unique in its musical, artistic, literary, theatrical, pictorial and performative work. The project's creator and interpreter of the entire compilation is Hans-Jürgen Gerung, guitarist, composer, director of the GERUNG editions and founder of the "international festival forum of contemporary music - oberstdorf" (based on poetics of Bussotti and held regularly since 2006 in Oberstdorf, Germany). Gerung, besides present two historical pieces by Sylvano Bussotti, Hermaphroditus (commissioned by Gerung himself in the 1999) and Ultima RARA (?), Pop song (commissioned in 1969 by the Goethe Institute in Rome) to Siegfried Behrend), he wanted to include works by four other composers who followed and shared the musical, poetic, artistic lesson of Bussotti. You will find excerpts from Hidehiko Hinohara, of the same Gerung, by Luigi Esposito (who were both students and interpreters and collaborators of Bussotti), and a piece by Mai Fukasawa, a Japanese pianist and composer who, despite not having been student of Bussotti, he has always admired his work, participating in some master classes held from the master, following its aesthetics and divulging its compositional poetics. «With the inclusion of the song of Fukasawa in The Bussotti-Circle, "adds Gerung," I would like to show how big it is the influence of Bussotti, still admired and studied by the younger generations and beyond the borders national and European ".

Let's move on to the contents.

As for Wanted, a piece that opens the entire cycle of the CD, commissioned in 2009 for the international festival forum of contemporary music – oberstdorf and dedicated to Hans-Jürgen Gerung, I will only say that it is a suite for guitars (classical, acoustic, electric guitar) composed of five pieces, where in one the only voice is involved. It has contextual provocative as well as controversial, sought-after prerogatives as you wish.

I leave the word to the interpreter:

"Writing a composition called Wanted, which puts classical guitar, acoustic guitar into play and electric guitar, through a balanced interaction, of strong dialogue, is a very task complex and stimulating. And if one of the movements of the suite brings the title Rock Star and others movements have titles that create a connection with large groups or pieces of rock, expectations of the composer, compared to the guitarist / performer, are very high, and this background implies a careful study of rhythm, style and above all of color and sound quality.

Door (Andante mosso), the first piece of the suite, is a complex blues in 7/8 that outlines, already after the first bars, an expertly delicate aesthetic that we could call pretty cool. This aesthetic it will be found in all the movements. And it is no coincidence that the title recalls the famous musical group Doors which in their songs widely adopted the Rhythm 'n' Blues, source of inspiration, over the years Fifty, of the Rock and Roll.

Gift (Ad-Agio, con spirito) presents a language that probably comes from jazz and his atmosphere seems to evoke the Sarabande for cello from the Suite n. 5, BWV 1011 by J. S. Bach. Listening to him deeply, with his eyes closed, he recognizes in it the complex rhythm of the first song, and being absorbed by this climax you can hear the inter ambitus of the guitar! And suddenly it becomes clear that it represents the inner life of the first movement, like it was a decelerated representation of the composer's musical status.

If the paths of the soul ... "If the paths of the soul were illuminated with purity, like angels we would dance in infinite spaces ". This phrase, written in fist by Esposito, recalls the epiphanies anthological of The Doors of Perception of Aldous Huxley and marks the Intro at Rock Star. It is pronounced from the single voice, naked, and represents the incipit of an instrumental, human, ideological metamorphosis it moves towards a liberation of the senses in a space without boundaries and without time. The gifted man!

Rock Star, the only piece of the entire electric guitar suite, is a pictographic page with some fragments of conventional notation. It acts as a trait d'union with all the compositions presented previously and at the same time prepare the last movement. I saw two ways to deal with it this fourth passage: 1. Remaining faithful to the stylistic trend of the page, resulting in a artistic world of the blues and drawing a filigree image of the popular cultured music of the XX century; 2. Opening another door to be able to launch towards new and infinite worlds that Rock music in the seventies he explored and discovered.

Both roads are valid and intriguing! I chose the first because I did not want to get away from it visual sounds of the Doors and their expressive poetry. And the guitar I used for commemorating the blues soul imbued in the page is an Eastman Archtop, and not a conventional one Stratocaster.

By your leave (Moderato e flessuoso) is the song that closes the suite, and is a riff in E, as is customary in the Rhythm 'n' Blues. Esposito used part of the title of the 1987 original song by Three Leaning Man - By your leave (from the album Fun in the key of E) to develop the idea of ​​a technique guitar, finger style. The piece is progressive, tends to a temporal transformation through the construction of a completely renovated work. It works, as in Door, a severe exploration of the guitar ambitus. Moving away from the classic twelve-beat Blues scheme, he inserts other necessary ingredients, flowing again into a perpetual world, literally avant-garde, in a structure devoted to classicism. The circle is closed! "

The second piece on the CD is Declarative Belfry by Mai Fukasawa, a very active pianist and composer in Japan. It is a song from 2006 that initially began with guitar, viola and contrabass, then revised for solo guitar in 2008. From 2005 to 2006 the composer wrote a cycle of seven passages entitled Luminary Pilgrimage, an evocation of the source of the light emitted (second Fukasawa) from the sound of the bells. Delclarative Belfry represents the destination, the final glow and the answer to this continuous research on the "light" started, in fact, with Luminary Pilgrimage.

The song is made up of five variations where delicate sounds fluctuate and create an atmosphere soft and intimate. The writing is clear, concise, calibrated, with a very articulate, rich dynamic of clear colors. From the imaginative point of view, it could be defined as a fantastic vision the sound of a bell tower that in Mai Fukasawa's mind presents itself and declares itself, illuminating the his recondite thoughts destined to a space of dream actions.

Ghosts in the forest - the seven miniatures, by Hans-Jürgen Gerung, the third song on the CD, was written in the Allgäu, a region of Bavarian Germany, "a magical place of my homeland, in a forest, near a small stream. " Gerung says. "As a boy, when I went in these places, following a steep path, I encountered a large tree trunk fallen a long time ago covered with moss and a type of fungus called piptopotus betulinus, still present, which evoked me mysterious scenes, forest spirits, fairies and other fantastic figures ».

Composed as a mythological music for children, you meet characters like the Faun, Ariel, the demonic Troll, satyrs or nymphs made of ashes like the Meliades. Short, delicate pieces, of which everyone covers a little page or a little more, with a very pleasant theatricality, experienced in the interiority of the gesture sound where, often, musical phrases sculpt the image of the fantastic creature represented. Flipping through the manuscript score, one notes a jot, almost improvised, without any writing correction, emotional and tense charge.

In the first passage, Fauno is represented through a reference of scenes that reveal themselves in a mixture of sounds, and every musical phrase ends on a delicate arpeggio that photographs its shape captivating.

The second passage, Ariel, depicts a spirit of the air, and the melody, though fleeting, returns on his steps often and settles on delicate harmonic sounds that vibrate in the clear air of a dream world. Troll is the third song and is born on five sounds (sib, fa, sol, si, mi). The construction of sounds is mysterious and interrogative, and unveils the masculine and feminine nature of being fantastic.

Fata opens the fourth piece with a series of appoggiature and phrases of a contrapuntal and fugal character. It is a flowing, linear, limpid piece that wanders through the unobserved bushes of the enchanting forest Allgäu.

The fifth piece is assigned to Driade, a nymph of oaks. Gerung's music calms images illusory with moments of stasis alternating with small sentences with a reflexive character. The variants of the dynamic capture the light step of this fascinating creature able to soar gently.

Meliadi is the penultimate passage and moves on a binary rhythm making it dance, as in a gavotte, these wonderful nymphs of the ash tree born from the blood of Uranus. The generated harmony is spectral e visionary, clear is its timbral smoothness.

Closes the entire Satyr cycle, with a series of arpeggiated phrases that recall, in an illusory game, the fourth piece dedicated to fairies. Listening is a curtain that slowly closes following the heterogeneous flows of music.

Il Cigno Pesarese, two fantasies with one or more clarinets by Hidehiko Hinohara (refined composer and Japanese pianist, profound esthete and author of important musical pages) was born in 1999 and sees his first performance at Terranova Bracciolini (Arezzo). In 2003 Hans-Jürgen Gerung realized it a guitar version, under the supervision of Hinohara himself, on the occasion of the performance at the IV Nachtmusik in the Rotunda of Mauritius in the Cathedral of Constance, Germany. The song is dedicated to Gioacchino Rossini (called, precisely, the swan of Pesaro) and consists of two pages from the pictographic aspect (I. del Sole - II of the Muses) where curved and twisted pentagrams meet swaying together with the collage of some fragments of the frescoes of the Teatro del Sole in Pesaro built in 1637 (rebuilt in 1818 as the New Theater and named Teatro Rossini in 1854). In the version with one or more clarinets the interpreter has the difficult task of developing a piece that is renews to every interpretation. Following the sequence of the 12 trends, present on each page, the interpreter will choose the fragments of the collage (soaked in sounds and musical actions) to be alternated, in one constant sound and symbolic dialogue. The 24 musical performances of the two fantasies (I. del Sole: immoto, incisive, violent, sweet, serious, calm, quick, mysterious, expressive, cantabile confused alive, energetic; II. of the Muses: subdued, tragic, discreetly flowing, flexible, wide, graceful, subdued, melancholic, tenderly, articulated - quick, playful, free) the sumptuousness and beauty of the richly decorated frescoes of the Teatro del Sole, recalling theatrical scenes, actions musical, stage gestures. Each trend has its own character, its own synthesis expressive, sometimes defined, but in dialogue with the whole piece.

The guitar version of 2003 remains faithful to the original score, without the presence of the fragments of the collage of the frescoes of the Teatro del Sole of Pesaro, but these fragments are implied, and re-emerge through a very elegant, meticulous and well-kept writing, both in appearance formal and stylistic both from the harmonic and melodic point of view. And from the timbric game that emerges is made space a considerable range of colors that opens ancient curtains with spaces on the contemporary.

Hermaphroditus - Great mythological Fantasy, for Guitar, formed by seven scenic-dance moments, "Work commissioned by Hans-Jürgen Gerung for his interpretation", quotes a sentence in the frontispiece. Written in 1999 by Sylvano Bussotti, is the penultimate passage on the CD. The creature extraordinary that inhabits the pages of this work is the pretext for a probable choreography on the union and interchange between opposing sexes. Imagining the statue Sleeping Hermaphrodite, of unknown author who blissfully lies on the mattress sculpted by Bernini, this figure reawakens and takes life in the beautiful manuscript pages by Bussotti. Here is a note from her: «Six o'clock come back strings of a kind instrument to weave amorous voices; made arcane for the unexpected question of a author-interpreter, given to mirror himself in the musical heart of the same ropes, touched with ideas taken in the 1960s; in a playful yet classic reflection. I would say that today they have a body. D'opera stretched out as in marble, to offer (dream), along seven adventures or episodes, which embrace distant, yet close, years of listening, this harmonious contemplation. There is also a marginal renunciation: the usual appeal to the pictographs does not take place here; thus wanting to drive hands and imagination of the recipient towards the earthly interiors, in the sound path, completely naked, not decorative, horizontal to harmony only; grave, delicate but profound, of secret ropes. exactly I say arcane. And I would even say mythological. If the beauty of ancient passions makes them new. " These seven sound islands breathe widely and blend together in a hedonistic game love where Bussotti's writing does not betray at all, always sought after, scrupulous, orderly and conscious, full of expressive novelties and of profound philological value. In this happy work guitar (as in the next, Ultima RARA), the voice plays a fundamental role, brings out epiphany references, moments of life lived, through moments of breath and words clearly pronounced. The entire work is dedicated to Stefano (Stefano Fiori, ed.).

And the flowers, the first piece of Hermaphroditus, puts his signature on a quick time, with strength and all in one breath. He sings, exclaims, pants and dances, then moves away, almost runs, runs, runs again and, of new, strongly explodes in a synthesis of sounds that vibrate in a just, solemn, and unitary instant.

Chitarronata, leaves no room for uncertainty, it is a comfortable dance, elegant, sometimes fast, opposed to a continuous breath of sentences, where the guitar virtuosity is exalted and brought at the extreme borders.

Dôme épais, this great sound dome, welcomes accurate melodies, caressing moments, harmonies imbued with erotic transparency, borrowed from fascinating rhythms. A very delicate and poetic theme, a beautiful one melody, often appears for the whole duration of the piece, and accompanies the intoxication of the beautiful gesture sentimental.

Upupa, recalls another work by Bussotti, Voliera, in 1989 (from Tredici Trame n.8), in a long, grave, recondite time. "A touch of hardly metallic nails", is written in the middle of the score, opening the scene to a "favorite going lover" and then disappearing into the forest silences that a light wind reveals.

Suddenly Folìa Farinello, we read at the head of this passage, simply said Farinello. It touches ancient resonances, very precise affects a pulsation with vivid colors and he abandons himself in Lachrimae (and here is a synthesis of another master's work, Lachrimae, for each entry, from 1978). Here the guitar has the difficult task of engraving a dictated harmony from long phrases of biscrome, semibiscrome and quintuple managed in complex arpeggios, dynamic from the ppp al fff, along with their variants and accents of all kinds.

Following is a photo of me, a boy, who walks on a "moderate" trend, where the author asks a light but soft sound, just reinforced. Very short snapshot with dancing sounds on the whole instrumental range. Moments of reflection accompany the carefree trend of the sentences, and on the final, "gradually dying".

Statue closes the mythological Great Fancy, and here there is an explicit reference to My Lumi, dear lights by Giovanni Battisti Guarini (III book of the Madrigals of Monteverdi) with a quote to Giò Pietro Flaccomio. The image of the statue appears in a "fittobosco", a "belbosco", with the smell of moss, where "a quick look aims at". The musical phrases are of an extreme brightness. Sculpted in the embankments of the six strings, from bass to treble, with delicate steps of virtuosity, come with "exactitude extreme "and I walked towards a" now silent "that gently accompanies listening to its closed.

Ultima RARA (?) (Pop song), for solo guitar or three guitars, closes the entire CD cycle, and closes the cycle, begun in 1962, of all RIGHTS of Bussotti (although the master declared that the RARA it has never been completely abandoned). With this acronym (Romano Amidei Romano Amidei), Bussotti has written true cornerstones of the history of music, and his birth took place in the manner of all occasional. They were in a Cafe and Romano Amidei, dedicatee of all RARA and in that period of his life partner, he had worn the two shirt cufflinks that Bussotti had given, and on each twin there were the initials of his name and surname (RA - RA). The look of Bussotti fell on the crossed hands of Amidei who composed the word RARA, and so was born the famous acronym that has given life to wonders like The Rara Requiem, Rara (film), Rarely, Rara'ncora, Rara (sweet), Raragramma, to name a few. This score, complex, lyrical, written in three instrumental voices (close voice, first voice, voice far away) in an impeccable way under the guitar and compositional profile, contains polyphonies heterogeneous and complex that act as a counterpoint to the text interwoven in it and entrusted to a voice spoken. "Free wandering sounds, just barely speaking", we read between the staves. "A line: a film, a thread, a crowd, the party ", continues the text and concludes by quoting a date" it rains November nineteen sixty-nine, "followed by a phrase that marks the prelude, perhaps, of the end of a love: "(Do not forget it)". The last RARE can be played with one or three guitarists, and if only one guitarist performs it he can freely choose the fragments to play, alternating the execution between the staves. "I made the three lines entrusted to the three guitars with only one guitar," says Gerung, "performing all the fragments present in the score, with a polyphonic reading, using a fingering complex, taking care of the timbric diversity and the pop song character desired in the score. The voice was recorded circularly, with a dolby surround effect, and then superimposed on the guitar. Was a hard work, interesting and complicated ». Continue Gerung. "Maestro Bussotti was very happy of this version of mine, he called it unique, beautiful and full of sensuality ».

Of course, this titanic undertaking by Hans-Jürgen Gerung speaks volumes about his expressive abilities and interpretative, laden with a transcendental virtuosity that his guitar faces, not only in this masterpiece by Bussotti, but also in the other five tracks where performances are planned complex and heterogeneous.

Gerung has the ability to cross multiple territories, reading the musical and pictographic pages with the eye of the guitarist and the composer, demonstrating a rare skill combined with a perception uncommon interpretation. The touch of its strings often reminds of the sound shadows that inhabit ours consciousness. In Wanted he elegantly managed to cross all the stylistic profiles of the five tracks entrusted to the three different guitars, giving it a touch of great lightness.

The ethereal light of Mai Fukasawa's bells has magically emerged clear and limpid, in Declarative Belfry.

It has often been said: "the composer is not always the best interpreter of himself". Well, this thesis it can be debunked by listening to the refined and attentive touch, as a true interpreter (and turning aside like composer), in his Ghosts in the forest.

And yet, the lyricism of Il Cigno Pesarese by Hidehiko Hinohara has been richly expressed and evoked from his brilliant guitar.

In Hermaphrodite Gerung wisely grasps the stylistic, lyrical and scenic gesture of Bussotti, who dance in harmony in the seven scenes of the virtuous piece.

While, in Ultima RARA he exceeds himself by venturing between the harmonic and melodic complexities of the triple pentagram. Managing the phonetics of the text present in the pages in a circular and expressive becomes an officiant at the service of art, music and poetry.

Hans-Jürgen Gerung is a cultured, highly talented guitarist with an impeccable technique clear, and a lively, cantabile, poetic virtuosity. He follows a daily discipline, activated by a musical curiosity that makes an instrumentalist a great performer. And finally, the conception of this editorial project gives a clear demonstration of its artistic and intellectual clarity, always in communion with history and with one's contemporaneity.

It thus manifests itself as "LAST RARE - The Bussotti-Circle", with six passages in convivial harmony, below the sign of Sylvano Bussotti, in an always lively and fervid creative activity.

Text:

Luigi Esposito

English translation:

Adrian Brancato

Aufnahme:

Studio: edition-gerung

Schnitt: Hans-Jürgen Gerung

grafische Gestaltung und Layout:

Hans-Jürgen Gerung