related works
Fêtes à tensions: (les) eaux marchent : for 20 players / Luc Brewaeys
Genre:
Chamber music
Subgenre:
Large ensemble (12 or more players)
Scoring:
fl(picc, fl-a) ob cl cl-b fg h trp trb 2perc hp pf 3vl 2vla 2vc db
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Voice and instrument(s)
Scoring:
zang fl sax-s 2sax-a 3 sax-t fg 5trp 4trb trb-b tb 2perc g-e pf db
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Voice and instrument(s)
Scoring:
bas lirone chitarrone org double-harp
Genre:
Vocal music
Subgenre:
Voice and instrument(s)
Scoring:
zang 2vn vla vc
composition
Fantasia con tre canzoni popolare Napoletane : for mezzo-soprano and 6 instrumentalists / Luc Brewaeys
Other authors:
Brewaeys, Luc
(Composer)
Description:
In February 2007 Jan Rispens, the director of the Gent Conservatory and to whom I dedicated the score, asked me to "arrange" a few Napoletan folk songs for some students of different conservatories who would give a concert on the occasion of the reopeneing of the Academia Belgica in Rome, and he wanted something to conclude the concert with all the students involved playing together. That is why he score requires piano 5 hands, which has the advantage that the third performer can at once turn the pages for the colleagues. Jan Rispens chose for Napoletan songs because Queen Paola of the Belgians was to be present and she was born in the Napoletan area. The first performance took place on May 2, 2007 in Rome with mezzo Els Mondelaers as a soloist with myself conducting.
The original idea was to arrange the songs a little bit like Berio had done in his Folk Songs, but I soon decided to compose an introduction, and finally to make a composition with the songs as basic material. The first (sentimental) song "Core 'ngrato" immediately triggered a fragment from Verdi's Traviata so I composed something similar to go along with the original melody to which I didn't change anything. I added, however, a belcanto-cadenza just before the end of it. After a short transition the second song "Fenesta che lucive" takes off in a strange way as the soloist sings the melody a quarter-tone down along with the alto flute and the cello, while the harp and piano remain of course tuned normally. The effect is amazing in this context. Later on everything returns more or less to normal. The harp and piano play a fast transition to get into the last song "La festa di Piedigrotta" which I treated as a slow tarantella. The accompaniment is supposed to sound quite normally, but each part playing it is actually out of phase. Just before the end there is a reminiscence to the second transition, the last bit of the melody comes back very slowly before the instruments conclude in a brilliant way.