Winner of the II Biennial International Barto Prize for solo piano composition, Three Movements for Solo Piano by Patricio da Silva, has received international acclaim with high profile performances by celebrity pianist Tzimon Barto in concerts from Ravinia Music Festival in the USA to recitals for the Beethoven-Haus in Germany.
Three Movements for Solo Piano (2007) by Patricio da Silva
Concert Reviews
in Das Magazin von Steinway
" […] a true firework of youth and strength: three pieces of the young composer Patricio da Silva […] sensual harmonies and melody layers, roaring hammers which reached the limits of the Grand […] "
in WAZ-Recklinghausen, by Elisabeth Höving
" […] The biggest cheer was for the work of the winner of the International Barto Prize, Patricio da Silva which Tzimon Barto performed solo. Sometimes with a touch like thunder, sometimes with very tender specks. […]"
Tzimon Barto, concert pianist
”[…] In a career that has spanned two decades and thirty countries, while I have programmed many contemporary pieces in solo recitals, I never known an audience to respond so enthusiastically to a “new-born” work, as I did this past summer while touring with Mr. da Silva’s “Three Movements for Solo Piano […]”
Three Movements for Solo Piano (2007) by Patricio da Silva
Three Movements for Solo Piano (2007) by Patricio da Silva
Program Notes
My purpose as a composer is to guide the listener through a world I happened to be the first to visit. I’m also a maker of aesthetics, not one, but as many as I need to. A few interests, however, are pervasive to my general compositional thinking: pattern, process, and memory. In order to remember we need patterns, in order to fabricate patterns we create processes, and last, memorable pieces are those we have a hard time forgetting.
In this work, the opening of the first movement starts with an illusion of a classical rhythmical gesture. After the first initial measures, the listener is set into an energetic world of colorful, crossed arches, where musical time is perceived as compressing, and at other moments, as distending.
In contrast with the horizontal kinetics that traverse the first part of this movement, the second part focus on restricted areas of the keyboard; repeated blocks, progressively extended to larger and larger keyboard ranges, until the block-type of material suddenly gets pulverized into single, short, spaced-out notes in a descending gesture. As time progresses, the single-note gesture grows and crystalizes back into the original arched gestures, as heard earlier in this movement.
The second movement, nostalgic in character portrays, is inspired by words of Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) “A sad melody with no weeping (…)”, “(…) a morning to sense the soul as a song (…)”, an introspective remembrance of the past as new cycles in life begin, colored with the use of simple “(…) old fashioned (…) ” melodic lines. His poem is published under “Poesias Inéditas”.
Melodia triste sem pranto,
Diluída, antiga, feliz
Manhã de sentir a alma como um canto
De D. Dinis.
Sad melody with no weeping,
Diluted, old fashioned, gay.
A morning for sensing the soul as a song
Of D. Dinis*.
———
* D. Dinis (1261-1325), Portugal’s sixth king, also known as a poet.
The third movement surges as an eruption, a fast and furious wild ride, a definite break from the emotional mood in the previous movement, setting an uncompromising drive, full of resilience with an unstoppable inner force until the end of the work. The three different sections are outlined by very contrasting uses of the keyboard, and the transitions between sections happen progressively as slow cross-fades between distinct contrapuntal gestures/materials.
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Melodia triste sem pranto,
Diluída, antiga, feliz
Manhã de sentir a alma como um canto
De D. Dinis.
|
Sad melody with no weeping,
Diluted, old fashioned, gay.
A morning for sensing the soul as a song
Of D. Dinis*.
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* D. Dinis (1261-1325), Portugal's sixth king, also known as a poet.
