The next review is of Paredes’ work Siphonophorae, which was performed by resident musicians of the Takefu International Festival at Echizen City Cultural Center on 10th September. The performance was described as the ‘compositional high point of the concert New Horizons III.’ The reviews may be read at the following links, or in the translations below:
https://scherzo.es/japon-inaugurada-la-33a-edicion-del-festival-internacional-de-takefu/
https://scherzo.es/japon-horizontes-actuales-en-perspectiva-desde-el-ayer/
Inaugural concert review - Hacia una bitácora capilar
The concert was rounded off by the Arditti Quartet and the Mexican composer Hilda Paredes, present at Takefu to introduce us to Hacia una Bitácora capilar (2013-14), a score of a quality and mastery of materials up to the challenge of the quartet to which it is dedicated, the Arditti, on the occasion of their fortieth anniversary. Hacia una Bitácora capilar makes explicit the artistic and personal links that unite Hila Paredes and Irvine Arditti, as their names are used as a coded key to articulate the harmonic structure of a score that intertwines and develops them in what is a fusion of life and art of a beauty as delicate as it is rigorously architectural. Possessing a richly personal language (in which Paredes integrates different cultural collections that bear witness to her life's journey through Mexico and Europe), this score has something - as its title makes explicit - of a logbook, of a diary of Paredes' relations with the Arditti Quartet, showing from a harmonic language that integrates melodies in progressive dissolution, like rumours that filter through time, to a profuse network of extended techniques that include percussion of the strings with the screw of the bow or a use of the glissando of an imposing beauty. On the other hand, time and movement become two crucial elements to cohere and disintegrate a quartet in continuous searches, encounters and new departures towards landscapes that never cease to conquer and integrate resources, timbral landscapes and a dialogue between noise, harmony and melody that places this quartet in the most current of the musical landscapes of our time.
Review of Siphonophorae, 10th September concert
Last Saturday's second concert was closed by Mexican composer Hilda Paredes, with Siphonophorae (2016), a sextet inspired by Thomas Glassford's sculpture Siphonophora (2016), which provides its models of unity and discrepancy, used by Paredes to structure the whole piece from harmonic motifs in progressive development and collapse, of great richness in terms of colours, timbres and textures, as is usual for the composer from Tehuacán. Another aspect to highlight is the rhythm: impressive for its richness and neat layering within the sextet, adding one of the elements that incorporates the most vivacity to Siphonophorae, together with the profusion of extended techniques that confer colour to the more purely harmonic structures. The performance by the resident musicians at the Takefu Festival, led by Bach specialist Masato Suzuki, was richly nuanced, as well as beautifully contrasted between the three groups of strings, winds and piano. Of particular note were flautist Mario Caroli, for his refinement in the tuneless air passages; clarinetist Nozomi Ueda, in her handling of the dark tessituras of the bass clarinet; and violinist Yasutaka Hemmi, whom some Japanese composers have described to me as the "Japanese Arditti", so needless to say more. The precision of his attack, especially in terms of extended techniques, created that refined and neat mechanism of contrasts that is Siphonophorae, leaving us with the compositional high point of the concert New Horizons III.