Program

Studio Musikfabrik

Performers

Gabriele Mastrototaro (Flute)

Franz Reiks (piano

Le Merle noir (The Blackbird) - Olivier Messiaen

Le Merle noir (The Blackbird) is a piece for flute and piano which was written by the composer and ornithologist Olivier Messiaen in 1952. The Conservatoire de Paris had commissioned him to write a test piece for the flute examinations that year. Through his life-long interest particularly in birdsongs, this was the result. It is mainly based on the sounds of the Eurasian blackbird (sc. Turdus merula).

Krishna e Radha - Giacinto Scelsi

Krishna e Rada for flute and piano is a joint composition by Giacinto Scelsi and Carine Levine. This piece, written in 1986, does not belong to the cycle of music for solo flute or flute and another instrument written in the 1950s, as Quays (1954), Tetraktis (1959) and Hyxos (1955), where the composer shows off a certain tendency to lead the instruments to a unity rather than emphasizing the differencies between them. As Carine Levine writes in the Preface of the score, « Scelsi and I spent numerous evenings playing music together at his home in Rome. These evenings consisted of the both of us improvising on our respective instruments. On this particular evening Scelsi and I had a visitor, [...] without my noticing, Scelsi had turned on the ancient tape recorder situated next to the piano ». Scelsi literally transcribed the tape of their improvisation and a new piece was born : « Krisha e Radha », two characters described in the ancient Hinduistic Gita-Govinda poems from 1100 B.C. Scelsi’s music for flute shows an original and deep conception of the sound as spherical as well as the importance of little intervals (even less than a half tone distance), circular patterns and a particular insight into sound variation.