When two guitars are better than one
Daily Comfort ZoneA completely unexpected delight from French contemporary composer Karol Beffa.
A completely unexpected delight from French contemporary composer Karol Beffa.
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Karol Beffa belongs to the new generation of French composers who have left the totalitarian ideologies of Boulezbianism behind and pick-up tonality, expression, craft – qualities of what still exists of music that has survived the rages of time and still ‘speaks’ to contemporary listeners – in short: tradition, not as a set of outdated rules, but as a living organism freely interpreted according to individual tastes and capacities.
Other such composers in France:
Richard Dubugnon (he is actually french/swiss, but well….)
Guillaume Connesson (who wrote a successful opera – Les Bains Macabres – that sounds like written 100 years ago and is modern again)
Thierry Escaich (writing very colourful and virtuosic orchestral works but is mainly an organ composer)
Ives Castagnet (who has nothing to do with Spanish folklore but writes fantastic choral music in the wake of still very successful composer Maurice Duruflé)
How come? Boulez tried to ‘restore’ serious new music through politics and power, but failed because his ideas were modernist. The practice of classical music life is not modernist in nature, i.e. ideological, but commercial (which has is own problems).
Excellent reminder that it’s time for one of my frequent re-listens to the wonderful Radio France recording of Idil Biret doing the 3 Boulez piano sonatas . . . An award-winner in its year, and rightly so.
I always play this after a long, difficult working day, it calms me down:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXjPNLNcr9k
Sally
Gnessin Russian Academy of Music, Moscow, Nov. 10, 2021.
PS
When I dictated my comment, my PA wilfully omitted maybe the most important French composer of new tonality: Nicolas Bacri, who started-off his career as a thorough modernist, embodying all the hopes of French modernism for a future where it was going to be threatened by less progressive trends – i.e. ‘conservatism’. But because Bacri is a very gifted artist and a very intelligent mind, he discovered the obvious and exitted the artificial bubble. His violin concertos are great works. On YouTube there is much to be found of Bacri.
My fly on the wall informs me that he is writing a book about his artistic development in France. That will be fascinating.
2 viola players, when you need the sound of starving cats, in Stereo.
This music, in its treatment of the guitars, reminds me of the three guitar quartets written in 1986, 1988 and 1989 by the Anglo-Monegasque composer, Anthony Burgess. If two guitars are better than one, then four are twice again as nice!