DESCRIPTION:
Traces from Nowhere (2017)
Alessio Elia (*1979)

Impronta - Ensemble für neue Musik e.V.

Jeanne Vogt, violin
Nikolay Shugaev, violoncello
Maura Marinucci, clarinet
Anna Štrbová, oboe
Miguel Pérez, bassoon
Andreas Luca Beraldo, conductor

16.02.2017, LAC, new auditorium in Lugano (CH)

HUMAN MACHINE

One of the features of the late twentieth century music was the gradual mechanization of music, showing in a more and more explicit way the ouster of human components, such as the emotions or the oscillation of tempo and dynamics in the performances.
This has also affected the interpreters who were asked to turn their expressivity into a more precise and uniformed (even flattened) execution. Great example of this type of music are the studies for player piano by Conlon Nancarrow in which the human performer is replaced by a mechanical piano whose hammers were driven by perforated rollers, or certain piano studies by Ligeti, designed for pianists in flesh and blood but with a strong mechanical component, works that often, given the impracticality of the performance, were entrusted to the execution of a player-piano.
The project "Human machine" aims to bring back music to the expressive dimension of the human being, to find in the "inaccuracy" of the human performance not an aspect of imprecision, but elegance, because beauty is made of asymmetries, little nuances that make things familiar to us.
Taking these ideas in mind we decided to do the reverse operation to "mechanize", that is to "humanize" what, by its nature, was born mechanical. The central figure of the project is the Yamaha Disklavier.
Through a computer software, the Yamaha Disklavier is now, in all respects, a member of the ensemble, able to understand the gesture of the conductor and adapt to it, enter the exact moment, operate accelerandi or rallentandi following the conductor’s hand movements, favoring the spontaneity and immediacy that each execution has, qualities which make each performance unique.
A machine becomes in that way a real component of the ensemble, and in this way it is easier for us to share a certain familiarity with it, understand it and love it because it closest to us.