WNMD 2025
Piano Marathon / Maratona de piano
02-06-2025 · 17h00, 18h00, 19h00
Centro Cultural de Belém, Pequeno Auditório
Lisbon
Elsa Silva · piano
WNMD 2025 ·
Piano Marathon / Maratona de piano (1)
02-06-2025 · 17h00
Centro Cultural de Belém, Pequeno Auditório
Lisbon
Bilheteira · Box Office (CCB)
Elsa Silva · piano
BENCE KUTRIK (Hungary, 1976)
Chorale Machine (2022), 4’
ISCM Hungarian Section submission
GLENDA KEAM (New Zealand, 1960)
Mind Springs (2017), 10’
JORGE PEIXINHO (Portugal, 1940–1995)
Harmónicos (1967), 16’
LUCIANO BERIO (Italy, 1925–2003)
Sequenza IV (1966), 11’
NGUYEN HONG ANH (Vietnam, 2005) YCA
Quiet Moment (2023), 11’
ISCM Vietnam Contemporary Music Centre submission
YCA · ISCM Young Composers Award candidate
José Pedro Ribeiro · piano
WNMD 2025
Piano Marathon / Maratona de piano (2)
02-06-2025 · 18h00
Centro Cultural de Belém, Pequeno Auditório
Lisbon
Bilheteira · Box Office (CCB)
José Pedro Ribeiro · piano
CÂNDIDO LIMA (Portugal, 1939)
Paráfrase sobre "Lettera Amorosa" de Claudio Monteverdi (2024), 14’ WP
CARMEN CÂRNECI (Romania, 1957)
HESPER(Í)A (2016), 9’
ISCM Arfa submission
HUGO RIBEIRO (Portugal, 1983)
Études for piano solo (2024–2025), 10’ WP
PIERRE BOULEZ (France, 1925-2016)
12 Notations (1945), 10’
WP · world premiere
Mrika Sefa · piano
WNMD 2025
Piano Marathon / Maratona de piano (3)
02-06-2025 · 19h00
Centro Cultural de Belém, Pequeno Auditório
Lisbon
Bilheteira · Box Office (CCB)
Mrika Sefa · piano
SILVIA BORZELLI (Italy, 1978)
A Self-portrait (2022), 12’
ISCM Netherlands Section submission
CARLOS MARECOS (Portugal, 1963)
A Casa do Cravo (2019), 12’
BRUNO GABIRRO (Portugal, 1973)
3 Miniaturas , 7’
LUIGI NONO (Italy, 1924–1990)
... sofferte onde serene … (1976), 14’
PROGRAMME NOTES
BENCE KUTRIK (Hungary, 1976)
Chorale Machine (2022), for piano
ISCM Hungarian Section submission
— The piece was created in multiple phases; originally, I started working on it in 2017 with the idea of a Hommage à Ligeti piece. The original version remained in the drawer for years, and then, in 2022, composers were asked to write reflections on selected Liszt pieces for a concert. I chose The Grey Clouds for two reasons: firstly, this is not a typical Liszt piece but a late, somewhat more transcendent work; secondly, I believe the musical image depicts a calm-before-storm atmosphere, where the clouds are gathering, but the storm has not yet struck. This could also be a portrayal of the present era. The original title of my piece was Prelude; however, after the premiere, it was given the final title, Chorale Machine, referring to the musical material and contemporary life, which, like a machine, continuously generates the problems of today’s “grey clouds”.
GLENDA KEAM (New Zeland, 1960)
Mind Springs (2017), for piano
— The initial images that preceded the composition of this work were of water springing and bubbling from the ground, and New Zealand’s geysers with their accompanying babbling flow of mineral-laden water that over time build sinter structures and pathways. Also, a boiling kettle (for a cup of tea – a necessity in the compositional process). But as the piece took form it became clear this was not made of bold, grand explosions but rather a more contemplative series of leaps that were inward-looking. The work leaps (springs) between sections that are harmonically unified but texturally and gesturally quite disparate, with interruptions from some rather demanding birds, sections that motor along, and thick chordal sections like a small forest of shadowy statues. There are a few musical statues in this diverse landscape: Olivier Messiaen, Gabriel Fauré, Keith Jarrett, Robert Wyatt, Jenny McLeod and Gillian Whitehead may perhaps be seen standing in the shadows, but probably most prominent are the distorted echoes of the most statuesque composer of western traditions to date, J.S. Bach.
JORGE PEIXINHO (Portugal, 1940–1995)
Harmónicos (1967), 16’
—Harmónicos is a work conceived on a mono-structure, a block of higher harmonics of a virtual fundamental sound. Over a necessarily long period of time, this single block undergoes multiple transformations, according to an almost kaleidoscopic criterion of maximum variability of sound parameters (intensity, rhythm, timbre) and morphology (selection of partial harmonic blocks, melodic fragments, registers). The performers must react to the stimuli provoked by the reproduction of the musical material produced by themselves, through a tense and intensive game of recreation.
LUCIANO BERIO (Italy, 1925–2003)
Sequenza IV (1966), 11’
— Sequenza IV for piano can be considered as a journey of exploration through the unknown and known regions of instrumental articulation and colour. Two independent harmonic sequences unfold simultaneously, at times interpenetrating each other: a real one on the keyboard and a virtual one – so to speak – by means of the sustaining pedal. In Sequenza IV, as in the other Sequenzas, I elaborated a polyphony of actions, intended as an exposition and superimposition of different instrumental characters and gestures. Sequenza IV was written in 1966 for Jocy de Carvalho.
(Luciano Berio)
NGUYEN HONG ANH (Vietnam, 2005) YCA
Quiet Moment (2023), for piano
ISCM Vietnam Contemporary Music Centre submission
— Quiet Moment depicts the emotional fluctuations of a wandering soul. It encompasses dreamy and ethereal elements, contemplations, reflections, etc., with the character’s illusions immersed in his own moments of silence. Using various pentatonic scales and their numerous variations, Quiet Moment makes everything sink into its silence.
CÂNDIDO LIMA (Portugal, 1939)
Paráfrase sobre "Lettera Amorosa" de Claudio Monteverdi (2024), 14’ WP
— This work of memory of Renaissance and medieval memories, of poets and musicians from ancient and future times is at the same time a glorification, appropriation, transgression, projection and expansion, through metaphors and analogies, of the concrete world of the word through sound abstraction, semantically far removed from the objectivity of the concept and the notion of paraphrase. The Renaissance semantics of Lettera Amorosa's music is projected and expanded in the various modern senses of this series of recitatives, psalmodies, chorales and madrigals. The work was presented and premiered as an improvisation, in its original and embryonic form, by the composer, at Casa Fernando Pessoa, in Lisbon, in 2013, and in 2015 it took on the autonomous form of a concert work. The listener and analyst will be able to reveal the bridges and boundaries between this clearly ‘retro’ language and what is hidden in contemporary terms: Pérotin, Bach, Boulez…
(Cândido Lima, Abril 2025)
CARMEN CÂRNECI (Romania, 1957)
HESPER(Í)A (2016), for piano
ISCM Arfa submission
— There is, in HESPER(Í)A – waters, lights (2016), a continuous flow – a sonic metaphor of a path leading towards an Eden space: the garden guarded by the four nymphs-daughters of Atlas, Hespería being one of them. This flow is created by the alert and always surprising rhythm. Also characteristic of the piece is the theme of graceful playing (giocoso), which mainly uses the high register of the instrument and Baroque-like ornamentation: grace notes, trills, and tremolo. HESPER(Í)A – waters, lights is narrative and evocative at the same time, still the primary character of the work is an exuberant one.
PIERRE BOULEZ (France, 1925-2016)
12 Notations (1945), 10’
— [Programme notes available soon]
SILVIA BORZELLI (Italy, 1978)
A Self-portrait (with Anatsui in the background) (2022), for prepared piano
ISCM Netherlands Section submission
— A Self-portrait was commissioned by Amici della musica di Firenze, Bologna Modern, and Gabriele Carcano, who asked me to write a piece about Africa and the music of Ligeti and Debussy. Titled as a homage to Ligeti's work and his Self-Portrait with Reich and Riley (with Chopin in the background), it also honours El Anatsui, a Ghanaian sculptor known above all for his majestic sculptures/ tapestries made with recycled materials such as printing plates and liquor bottle caps, crushed and connected together with meticulousness and geometric vision. The bottle caps come from superalcoholics used by Europeans as currency, symbolizing a means of submission during an era of slavery and colonization. Textures/ patterns, cells repeating and juxtaposing, similar and changing in profile and dynamics, refer to the textures of Anatsui but also to rhythms, mechanisms of Ligetian proximity, profiles/ waves of a distorted Debussyan nature evoking mbola’s timbre. All these references are woven throughout, ultimately forming a self-portrait.
CARLOS MARECOS (Portugal, 1963)
A Casa do Cravo [The House of the Carnation] (2019), 12’ for piano and electronics
— This piece is inspired by the Alentejo landscape, its emptiness, its silence, and the church bells that break that silence. At the same time, it recalls memories of the April 25, 1974 portuguese revolution. However, this is not a piece about the so called “hot summer,” but rather about the Alentejo lands and landscapes in the present time, a region that lived that period intensely and still holds those moments in its memory. One evidence is the house in Santiago do Escoural that still has a carnation painted on the front of the house since April 25, 1974. Some of those memories appear in the central section of the piece, where the piano paraphrases Zeca Afonso’s "Grândola Vila Morena" and the electronics feature excerpts of songs by Sérgio Godinho, José Mário Branco, GAC voices, and again Zeca Afonso. In the end, those memories dissolve into the Alentejo soundscape. The electronic part includes radio recordings from 1974–75, made by me on tape between the ages of 10 and 11, and later recovered. During many of the street events of the "hot summer" of 1975, my family would be out on the streets, and when I was too young to go, I stayed home recording the live radio coverage of those events. The piece also subtly refers to an episode in 1979, in the same town of the house of the carnation, where two locals were killed in a conflict during the restitution of land in Alentejo, at the end of the agrarian reform period. Since then, many utopias have faded, but the memory remains of thousands of people in the streets, experiencing freedom passing through their lives, perhaps in an exaggerated and urgent way, but genuinely; everything felt so urgent... As Sérgio Godinho says in one of his songs: “Waiting so many years makes everything more urgent.” Thus, in the joy and melancholy of revisiting that period, this piece finds its inspiration. As José Mário Branco once said: “Was all the struggle worth it? Yes. It was…”
(Carlos Marecos)
LUIGI NONO (Italy, 1924–1990)
….. sofferte onde serene … (1976), 14’
— As my friendship with Maurizio Pollini deepened, and my astonished awareness of his pianistic style grew, a harsh wind of death swept away the ‘infinite smile of the waves’ in my family and in Pollini's. This common experience brought us closer together again in the sadness of the infinite smile of the ‘serene waves suffered’. This shared experience brought us even closer together in the sadness of the infinite smile of the ‘serene waves suffered’. This is also the meaning of the dedication ‘to Maurizio and Marilisa Pollini’. In my home on the Isle of Giudecca in Venice, we continually hear different bells ringing, their sounds reaching us day and night, through the mist and with the sun, with different resonances and different meanings. They are signs of life on the lagoon, on the sea. Invitations to work, to meditate, warnings. And life goes on, in the subdued and serene necessity of ‘balancing the depths of our being’, as Kafka puts it. Pollini, live piano, is amplified by Pollini, piano elaborated and composed on tape. Neither contrast nor counterpoint. Pollini's studio recordings - above all his attacks of sound, his extremely articulate way of striking the keys, his various fields of intervals - were subsequently composed on tape, again at the RAI phonology studio in Milan, with the help of Marino Zuccheri. The result is two acoustic layers that often merge, thereby neutralising the mechanical strangeness of the recorded tape. Between these two layers, we studied the ways in which sound is formed, in particular the use of the vibrations of pedal strokes, which are perhaps particular resonances ‘on the deeps of our being’. These are not ‘episodes’ that exhaust themselves in succession, but ‘memories’ and ‘presences’ that are superimposed and, as memories and presences, merge with the ‘serene waves’.
(Luigi Nono)