Commissioned by Gesellschaft fuer Neue Musik Ruhr e.V. and Kunststiftung NRW
Premiere: 3/6/2009, Essen, Germany, E-Mex Ensemble
Fragment of Noise and Blood
1. multiphonic I - in myself
2. toneless I - the almost perfect balance between force and retention
3. noise I - apotheosis of the absurd
4. noise II - capital chaos
5. rhythm I - intangible red
6. multiphonic II - I want immortality only so that the blood flows through the eras (Arseny Tarkovsky)
Text from the program of the concert on June 3, 2009 - Philharmonie Essen by Stefan Drees
(...) Luís Antunes Pena works in his "fragments of noise and blood" with isolated sound components, which are brought into relation with each other in different ways. Each of the five short movements is based on a precisely thought-out sound situation, the possibilities of which are musically fleshed out. Essential structural elements here are sounds with variable noise components, whose use and combination lead to ever new sound shapes. Pena uses clearly defined pitches in the third piece ("apotheosis of the absurd"), for example, where a melodic structure is worked out of the evenly flowing piano part through special articulations and confronted with the sounds of granite slabs. On the other hand, the so-called "multiphonics" of the clarinet, which the composer forms into fragile shapes in the first piece ("in mir selbst") and juxtaposes with the gliding pitches of the violoncello and electronic noise recordings, have a higher noise content. At other points - for example in the second piece ("the almost perfect balance of power and retention") - Pena mainly resorts to sounds with a high proportion of noise, such as cried cymbals, which he uses in subtle rhythmicization. By always using the required means extremely sparingly, he creates a series of miniature-like sentence structures, whose fragmentary character is underlined by the diary-like subtiels.
(...)