Composer's Programme Note: Alloy III for Violin, Cello, Classical Accordion, and two Kokles. The instruments of this quintet are very different in appearance and in the way of playing as well as tone production: strings to be bowed, strings to be plucked, confronted with the airborne tone of the Accordion. The origins and the traditions of the instruments are also very diversified reaching from traditional folk music (the Kokle) and popular music (the Accordion) to art music of the classical tradition (the Violin and Cello). Acknowledging these references and connotations I refrain nevertheless from an obvious ‘casting’ of the instruments, since I have always been fascinated by the less evident, by transitions and gradual displacement, by the intangible places between one and the other. I search for this ‘terrain vague’ of fruitful uncertainty and permanent genesis.To arrive there, I have in this piece created a musical expression, which makes hidden relations and unexplored sonorous paths come forward between the different sound worlds of the instruments. Bringing together these musical substances, I look for something deeper than just common sounds: a fresh musical place. And the lively and bright sound world that emerges form this instrumental and textural ’in-between’ I associate to alloys, in particular the silvery amalgamations of mercury. The work was composed to musicians from the Latvian ensemble Altera Veritas and of Ensemble Aleph (France) as a part of the project European Instrumental Laboratory.
- ISBN: 9788759821350 (8759821353)