INFO
PRODUCTION CREDITS
Music: Pedro Alcalde
Simultaneous electronic music: Vaihtovirta
Authors: Pan Sonic (Ilpo Vaisanen / Mika Vaino)
Orchestra: Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya (OBC)
Conductor: Ernest Martínez Izquierdo
Visualizations: Videogeist
Event: Sónar Festival – Opening concert
Venue: L’Auditori Barcelona
Date: 17th June 2004
BACKGROUND
For the opening of the Sonar Festival 2004, Enric Palau came up with an idea for a collaboration between a symphonic orchestra (the OBC), certain musicians playing at the Festival: Ryuichi Sakamoto, Pan Sonic and Fennesz, and visual artists Videogeist, Lia and Jon Wozencroft. The idea was for some pieces from the classical music repertoire (Bach, Dvorak, Prokofiev, etc.) to be intervened using electronic media. The performance rights were denied for one of the six classical pieces chosen. In view of this, another approach was chosen: an orchestral score would be specially created for the occasion to intervene in one of the “electronic” themes. The electronic piece was Vaihtovirta (which in Finnish means “alternating current”) by Pan Sonic and the orchestral score for the intervention was written by me.
TITLE
FM for Funeral Music. The piece would be more accurately a “marcia funebre”. From the musical tradition of this form, I was interested primarily in its slow rhythm, procession-like, in sharp contrast to the fast pulse of electronic music, with which it had to converge. A thematic element on a minor second, links with the motive of mourning in the baroque “Theory of the Affects” and from there acts on the character traditionally associated with funeral music.
MUSIC
The role reversion, in which the orchestra was to freely intervene on an existing piece of electronic music, almost intrinsically involved speaking from common ground with the part labeled “classic”. Simultaneously, I was obsessed at the time with the idea of feeling that what was left of classical music nowadays was something like a collection of scraps, like breadcrumbs after a great feast. In the score, those crumbs became different cells as a tribute to composers who were currently part of my personal listening: Mahler, Bruckner, Bartok, Webern, Ligeti, and Kurtág. The central motif of “the pool of tears” scene in Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle was of use to determine the main pulse in the deliberate evolution of a procession wilfully slowed down.
SOUND PALETTE
Orchestra: 4-4-4-4 / 8-4-4-1 / timpani, percussion (8), celesta, harp (2), piano / strings
MEDIUM
Score
DURATION
6’43’’
AUDIO
PRESS
The evening suddenly got brighter when Pan Sonic’s Vaihtovirta made its appearance and it was the OBC that shook things up with a very attractive score, written by Pedro Alcalde. It was a dialogue built on an echoing rhythmic game of electroacoustics, that reached a good fusion thanks to the electronic sound magma with the orchestral melody. (…) A great contribution from Alcalde with Pan Sonic.
La Vanguardia – Jorge de Persia (18-06-2004) pdf
The musical journey improved at the moment in which the roles were reversed; when Pan Sonic brought a new piece, Vaihtovirta (the fruit of a successful collaboration with the composer Pedro Alcalde). It was when we had the real and hopeful feeling of finding ourselves in a valuable union of both universes. … It was the brightest moment of the afternoon.
Avui – D. Broc / X. Cester (18-06-2004) pdf
Suddenly the best of the night came. A clear transgression, a bold reversal of roles with Vaihtovirta by Pan Sonic with Videogeist images. The entire orchestra accompanied the electronic voice, and did so in its very own way, with glissandos and long pedals that generated an interesting feeling of detachment. (…) A path has been created which is well worth exploring further.
El País – Agustí Fancelli (18-06-2004) pdf
In Vaihtovirta’s arrangement, Alcalde chose to amplify the dark, grayish, and faintly sad texture, which one assumes must be present in Pan Sonic’s original, including an incredibly complex percussion part. It was, without a doubt, the most well-crafted piece, as well as the only true fusion between the music or sounds proposed by the Sónar guests and their symphonic hosts.
El Periódico – Joan Anton Cararach (18-06-2004) pdf