In the fifth program of this season at the Teatro Colón, the Buenos Aires Philharmonic Orchestra will offer a varied program, in which the Piano Concerto in A minor Op. 16 by Edvard Grieg –with the participation of the great Swiss-Canadian pianist Teo Gheorghiu as a soloist – and Symphony No. 12 in D minor Op. 112 by Dimitri Shostakovich, will dialogue with Tears of Tahuariwork of the Argentine-French composer Gabriel Sivak which premieres in Buenos Aires. The concert will take place on Friday the 24th at 8pm and will be directed by the Venezuelan Manuel Hernandez Silva.
It could be the imaginary licenses that allow reference to folklore traditions, understood as a palette of sounds and catalog of identity gestures, which unites the works in the program. There are echoes of Norway in the piano concerto of Grieg, who appeals to the folkloric traditions of his native land from his romantic experience, in the same way that Prokofiev’s Russia, who evokes the events of 1917 in his symphony, is recomposed in his Symphony No. 12. In the same direction, Tears of Tahuariby Gabriel Sivak, is the sound reconstruction of a direct experience in the Amazon. In 2022 the composer lived for a time among the Kuikuros Indians, in deep Brazilfrom where he returned with the ideas and understanding necessary to fulfill the commission of the Orchester des Pays de la Loire and the Fondation Banque Populaire.
As Heitor Villa-Lobos and more recently Egberto Gismonti knew how to do, in the face of an unknown world, Sivak was nourished by exuberant nature and unusual experienceswhich gave his music other sound textures, ethnic colors and tribal rhythms, in addition to raising awareness about the destructive aspect of man against nature. “I had been coming up with the idea of a work inspired by the Amazon for a long time. In 2019, when set fire In front of the eyes of the entire world, while Bolsonaro said that it wasn’t that big of a deal, I began to hear music inside my head in which there was more substance to write, and that substance was conditioned by the situation. That’s when I decided to finalize the project,” Sivak tells Page 12.
Humboldt’s biodiversity texts and Levi-Strauss’s anthropology texts accompanied the task of collecting useful sound materials that Sivak undertook to begin mapping out the work. “I deepened my research into the music of the Amazon and shortly after I arrived in the territory Xingu, a reserve where thirteen ethnic groups live. Right there I started composing, but with the idea of giving a dramatic twist to the work, a kind of musical theatre, thinking more about giving testimony of how people lived in that territory, than about exposing a mere sound description of the landscape. “More complaint than color, let’s say,” says the composer. “When I had a significant number of sketches, I began to select, also based on my experience in the jungle,” he adds.
Tears of Tahuari It is articulated in five moments. “Entrada no mato”, the first evokes the entry into the jungle and the Kwarup ritual with which the Indians exorcise the pain over the death of a loved one. “There I tried to reinterpret with the European orchestra the sounds of the flutes, which they use while walking, appealing to the multiphonic technique with the bassoons,” explains Sivak. The second movement is ‘Huka-Huka’ and has to do with a martial art practiced by the indigenous people, a kind of sumo but very moving and sensual, for which I created a rhythmic texture with pizzicatos on the strings. The third movement is ‘Aguas de Buriti’. There the music suggests the immersion in nature. Buriti is the river where we bathed, which I evoked with a sound of submerged instruments, which I found very suggestive,” continues the composer.
“Danse et polyrythmie,” the fourth movement, is a kind of still image of abundant nature. “I structured it based on field recordings which we did by going into the jungle on a motorcycle with an Indian. With that sound material of insects and various things, I created a series of loops that turned out to be a rhythmic base that I transferred to the strings,” says Sivak, who for the finale “Kuikuros” appealed to a rhythmic dithyramb typical of the ethnic groups of the Xingu territory. “I feel that with this work I reached the paroxysm of my relationship with Brazil, its music and its culture,” concludes Sivak, who a few years ago composed Capoeira Suitefor string quartet, inspired by northeastern rhythms, and was for a time the guitarist and composer’s arranger Toquinho.
Based in Paris since 2005, Sivak, who currently works in a Opera In collaboration with Alejandro Tantanian, He occupies a prominent place among French composers of this era. His works are regularly performed in France by the soloists of the French National Orchestra, the Radio France Children’s Choir, The Orchestra des Pays de la Loire, The Orchestra of Picardie and The Colonne Orchestra, to name a few; Part of his production is recorded in four monographic albums. The most recent, Dance in the waters of Buriti (Casa Velazquez, 2023), contains the recording of Tears of Tahuari. “It’s a pride It is very great to return to Buenos Aires and have my music played at the Teatro Colón, with the Philharmonic Orchestra. It is in some way a circle that closes in my life, waiting for a new one to open,” Sivak concludes.
