C/ Ferraz, 62 (Madrid) 1993-97; reminiscences

Formation: piano and tape (2 channels)
Creation: march-may 2008
Premiere: 21th november 2008, Auditorio Nacional (Madrid). EVA ALCÁZAR
Duration: 9 min.

→ Performance score
→ Guide score

The piece uses two radically different elements: a live piano and a recorded part built from a multitude of piano works recordings. It proposes a confrontation of both elements and their connotations: the quasi unconscious flow of the sound register, of the memory –recorded part- and the live and present piano, that contemplates it from the “now”.

The literality of the work goes from the formation to the title: this designates a place, a time period and the reminiscences evoked by them through sound. This is the only material and departure point of the work: a weave of more than 30 layers in which several musical pieces appear, pieces that filled my ears en that time and that place. A rather personal departure point –the piece was a commission for the anniversary of my first conservatory-, but that nevertheless tries to transcend itself in order to ask unsolvable questions that dissolve in the aesthetic stuff of the piece: the All and individuality that emerges from it, the vanishing past and the present that makes it prevail, the memory and the presence…

The continuous movement between the different elements of the piece brings into staggering the apparent firmness of the mentioned dualities: on the one hand, the recorded part goes from an all-layers texture to the feeble and ephemeral individuality of isolated reminiscences. On the other hand, the live piano part –always built from snapshots of the recorded part, wanders from a line that flows within the recorded memory, almost inaudible, growing gradually in volume and density –chord thickness-, and at the same time carrying a continuous and endless ritardando, until it reaches and end point in the form of big and solid chord blocks where memory literally stacks.