Leonardo Balada (b.1933)
Symphony No. 5 ‘American’ • Prague Sinfonietta • Divertimentos • Quasi un Pasodoble
Evolution and transformation, obsession towards a goal.
This is my modus operandi in music. My conviction is
that one’s personality can prevail despite changes and
seemingly different presentation of the ideas. Can an
artist stop being himself when he expresses his ideas in
different ways? Do I cease being myself if I dress in a
conventional suit today and in a colorful “toreador”
costume tomorrow?
All these questions come to mind when thinking
about the works on this CD. Symphony No. 5 and Prague
Sinfonietta present as their basic structure a
transformation in a surrealistic manner; Divertimentos is
an absolute contrast to Quasi un Pasodoble in its
character, although not in its technical substance.
Nothing surprised me more as a school child than
when I learned that molecules change constantly in our
bodies although we remain the same individual. As an
adult, nothing impressed me more, when collaborating
in the late 1950s and 1960s in New York with Salvador
Dalí, than when I saw how he would create
transformation, stretch ideas and present distortions in
his art… and he still would remain Salvador Dalí.
In my case though the conceptual influences came
not only from Dalí, but also from Rauschenberg’s
collages with contrasting techniques, geometric art and
abstract expressionism, including that of the Catalan
artist Alfonso Mier, which put together in musical terms
could create the drama and emotion that I was longing
for in my compositions, in contrast to the cold serialism
surrounding me.
Symphony No. 5 ‘American’ (2003) explores two
styles in the same work in an evolutionary structure. One
of these styles identifies with my avant-garde period,
which is dramatic and angular and spans from the midsixties
to the mid-seventies. During that period, in works
like Guernica (Naxos 8.557342) and Steel Symphony, I
used a long list of technical resources: atonality,
aleatoric devices, clustered harmonies, no tunes, no
traditional harmonies, strong rhythms and big contrast of
dynamics. Then in 1968 with Sinfonia en Negro –
Homage to Martin Luther King, a new style came to the
fore which was fully implemented in 1975 with Homage
to Casals and Sarasate (Naxos 8.557342). In this new
period I blend the ways of the avant-garde with ethnic
ideas, creating a symbiosis of these two worlds.
Symphony No. 5 uses these two styles.
The symphony, in three movements, is a
kaleidoscope of emotions. The work evolves from one
stage of darkness at the beginning to a high point of light
and unrepentant optimism at the end. In the first
movement, 9/11: In Memoriam, dry, loud, ugly, and
desperate sonorities are presented in the most abstract
way in a tense and driven manner. 9/11 was in my mind,
as was my childhood trauma caused by the bombings by
German airplanes in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil
War when I composed Guernica forty years ago. The
interval of a sad minor third is heard almost persistently
throughout, performed sometimes by the strings but
more often by the keyboard percussion, harp and piano
in what suggests fatal bells. That third is surrounded by
tone clusters, which often filter into minor triadic chords
with a most deceptive feeling. The minor third interval
of the first movement is also a constant in the second and
the third movements, but its function here is completely
different. In the second movement, Reflection, this
interval is part of a delicate fabric of melodic lines based
on a Negro spiritual. These lines are designed by several
instruments in layers. Here all is quiet, peaceful and
hopeful and to a degree melodious. In the third
movement, Square Dance, this minor third is part of
some American folk-tunes gathered together to build a
brilliant square dance, strongly rhythmic, tireless in its
perpetual motion and expression of happiness.
Altogether it is a trip from the abstract to the ethnic. The
symphony was composed from April 2002 to April
2003, commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony when
Mariss Jansons was Music Director, with the support of
The Heinz Endowment Creative Heights Artist
Residency Program in partnership with Carnegie Mellon
University School of Music. The world première took
place on 30th October 2003 at Heinz Hall for the
Performing Arts, in Pittsburgh, performed by the
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hans Graf.
When the Torroella International Music Festival in
Catalonia commissioned me to compose an orchestral
work, I came up with the idea of composing Prague
Sinfonietta. This occurred to me when I learned that an
orchestra from Prague was to give the première of the
commissioned orchestral work in Torroella. The musical
link was obvious. One of Mozart’s masterpieces is his
Prague Symphony. Also, Vicenç Bou, a native of
Torroella de Montgri, an old town near the
Mediterranean northern coast of Spain, had composed
some of the most beautiful sardanas. The sardana is the
national dance of Catalonia. These facts were
coincidental but at the same time suggestive of an
ambitious musical idea: the composing of a work in
which Mozart would meet Bou, a challenge impossible
to ignore. To me, one of the main challenges was to
allow my own style to come through in the midst of the
Mozart and Bou personalities. While the work tries to
represent the spirit of Mozart’s symphony by using
some of its motives and light designs, the work evolves
very often from diatonic to chromatic and polytonal
writing, which may lead in turn to thick textural
structures and collage of ideas. On the other hand the
rhythms and beautifully lyrical melodies of Bou may
appear gradually or unexpectedly in the middle of those
structures. Prague Sinfonietta was completed in April
2003 for a chamber orchestra of the size of a Mozart
style orchestra. It is dedicated to Josep Lloret, founder
and spirit of the Torroella International Music Festival
and it was first given by the Czech Sinfonietta
conducted by Charles Olivieri-Monroe.
The three 1991 Divertimentos for string orchestra
were conceived with contrasting sonic characteristics. In
Divertimento primero the sound is produced with
pizzicati, in the segundo with harmonics and in the
tercero with normal bow playing. In general the
ensemble is used to produce a massive sound rather than
a chamber-like one. The dynamic contrasts, as well as
the sound tensions, are very important to the essence of
the work. At the same time the concept of “recycling”
with which I first experimented in Three Anecdotes –
that is, the re-using of old gestures to generate new
results – is applied in this work, especially in
Divertimento segundo. The Royal College String
Ensemble of London conducted by Rodney Friend gave
the first performance of Divertimentos in 1991 at the
Torroella de Montgri International Music Festival.
The 1981 orchestral movement Quasi un Pasodoble
was composed with a grant from the National
Endowment for the Arts and was first performed by the
New York Philharmonic in November 1982, conducted
by Jesús López-Cobos. A pasodoble is a Spanish march
performed during a bullfight. In Quasi un Pasodoble this
musical form is explored very freely, in a surrealist way,
taking it very often outside the realm of its authentic
boundaries. The themes used are original, except for
hints of two very popular ones. The work mixes the old
with the new, consonance with clusters, straight rhythms
with complex textures in an outpouring of colour and
contrasts. Quasi un Pasodoble starts with a slow string
section in which the bass line of the pasodoble is
introduced in a lyrical and melodious manner along with
a second motif. Throughout the work, the rhythm of the
pasodoble appears, disappears and transforms, at one
point into what could be construed as a bolero, but at the
end the imposing folk-rhythm asserts itself with
conviction.
Leonardo Balada