Alberto Posadas: Königsberger Klavierkonzert

There are three dates that take on special relevance in the composition of this concerto for piano and orchestra, beyond the writing itself.

 

– In 2013 I began a close collaboration with the pianist Florian Hölscher for whom I ended up

writing a cycle of six works for solo piano entitled Erinerungsspuren. This new

work is intended as an extension of this collaboration, in this case in the frame of

concertante music.

 

– In 1965 Giacinto Scelsi wrote what is for me one of his most solid works: Anahit, a lyric poem dedicated to Venus. When I first listened this work, for violin and 18 instruments, I was strongly impressed by its boldness in establishing the relationship between soloist and tutti. This relationship emanated from the musical material rather than from a pre-established structure and transcended the dialectical relationship that had shaped Western music since the middle Baroque and Classicism.

 

– In 1736 the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler solved a problem that had been posed to him by the mayor of the city of Königsberg. The problem was how to connect the 4 areas of the city, separated from each other by the Pregel River and crossed in turn by seven bridges, so that each of them was crossed only once, returning at the end to the point of origin. The problem could not be solved, but thanks to this and generalizing the negative solution, he developed graph theory, which became the first foundation of mathematical topology. The use of the so-called Eulerian circuits is one of the compositional bases of this concert in three movements, of which in the first and third the soloist plays from the keyboard while in the second he also plays inside it.

 

In the first movement (Zyklen), following the graph theory, some »Eulerian circuits« were created to set the succession of materials, their temporalilty and to regulate the different types of relationships established between the soloist and the orchestra. These always with the intent of, without giving up alternation, exploring non-dialectical relationships. Some of them are taken from nature (epibiotic, mimetic, propulsive), while others are from purely musical practices (heterophonic or acoustical).

In the second movement (Ritual–Discantus–Choral) the piano almost completely loses its identity as a soloist, being stripped of any reminiscence of nineteenth-century virtuosity and a concept of expanded chamber music prevailing more. This movement is divided into three sections. The first is presented as a ritual in which an articulated, incisive gesture of a percussive nature becomes the trigger for »virtual resonances« that evolve over time. The second poses a discantus on a buried Gregorian melody (Media vita) that had already appeared, although somewhat hidden, in the first movement. Finally it leads to a kind of chorale created through topological transformations of an initial chord.

 

The use of Eulerian circuits returns in the third movement, but in this case more related to harmony issues and pitch distribution, although also at times to musical material, as for example in the two cadenzas that the soloist plays over a static sound from the orchestra. The writing of the soloist evolves from an idea that is at times harpsichordistic towards a thickened sound close to the textural and gestural, passing through moments of extreme polyphonic complexity. The three movements, although presenting very contrasting sound territories, are connected to each other. The idea of ritual gesture in the second movement has previously appeared from a different one in the first, which in turn returns in the third. The aforementioned Gregorian melody Media vita from the first is transferred to the second; chordal structures from the first reappear in the third, as do some musical materials from the first that become secondary gestures in the last. Thus an intricate circuit of temporary relationships and information is established, connecting the three movements, in a way analogous to how Eulerian circuits connect nodes. The orchestra’s writing is far from being a mere accompaniment to the soloist or a mere temporally shifted replication. Often one of them, either soloist or orchestra, emerges from the other, sometimes reinforcing, sometimes underlining, sometimes sliding, sometimes contradicting. Alternations with the same material lose weight in relation to the concept of the traditional concerto and gain it when the orchestra expands the acoustic entity presented by the piano.

This concert is a consequence of the purpose of reflecting on the different forms of relationship between the soloist and the tutti, which are nothing more than a translation of the relationship between the individual and society.
(Alberto Posadas)