Newsletter Quarta Corda
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Quarta Corda Year IX n.1 - february 2006 - Genoa for Paganini - Premio Paganini 2006 - Let me introduce you... Azio Corghi - Pleased to meet you... Syncopations - Q&A Volker Biesenbender - Paganiniana 2005: give youth a chance! - "I voli di Niccolò" by Luca Francesconi - The Paganini for Paganini: Q&A Carla Magnan - After the Premio - Download Quarta Corda Pdf Format (4 Mb) |
The Paganini for Paganini: Q&A Carla Magnan
The "Paganini" for Paganini. This year the Paganiniana offers ample space to contemporary music. In addition to the composition by Luca Francesconi I voli di Niccolò performed as a premiere by the Quartetto Arditti, on November 3, 2005, two young composers of the Genoa "N. Paganini" Conservatory, Carla Magnan and Stefano Guarnieri presented their works, together with Andrea Campora. A concert directed by Gian Marco Bosio and performed by the Instrumental Ensemble of students from the Conservatory in an original production that offered the audience a chance to get to know contemporary music.
We asked Carla Magnan a few questions.
What is your relationship with Genoa and how much did it influence your way of composing music?
I was born in Genoa and I live here, and it is a city that I have a very strong tie to. It is a fascinating place, a special city, decidedly unique. To say in what way it influences my work is a bit difficult to explain, every individual is inevitably the result of their own past, places, and people that they have met. The teachers and people with whom I studied and worked at the "N. Paganini" Conservatory over the years have surely influenced my way of composing. I continue to learn from them even now, marvelous teachers, some have become friends (to cite them all would be too long a list!), and have strongly impacted my formation; they have given me a lot.
"Intrusions" for violin solo, concertante oboe and Ensemble is the piece that you composed: is there a link with the music of Paganini?
In the widest sense of the term, above all, theatrical. The piece is a continuous play between the violin solo and the oboe that would like to take its place but can't, both are supported or "swallowed" by the rest of the ensemble. And since it is a solo, the violin follows various stages: the desire to reach Paganini-style virtuosity, that is impossible at least in this case, if not for a few fleeting moments, the exhilaration that brings about the achievement of certain goals and the inevitable downfalls.
Then I chose passages and positions on the instrument that "force" the performer to assume physical postures that are deliberately theatrical.
It is a Paganini-style piece in soul and intention, theatrical in reality and spirit.
Can you tell us about your musical influences and the relationship that is established between the composer and the performer?
There are multiple influences: everything that surrounds us contributes to making our ideas. Developing them in the best way possible then is a question of technique. The relationship between the composer and the performer is fundamental. Very often, the final "keystone" for the solution of some intention within a piece that cannot find the right expression comes exactly from the collaboration between the instrumentalists. To cite a very dear violinist friend with whom I have worked a lot: "One should give oneself over to the other, the first one knowing that he has to give up some good ideas, if these prove not to be feasible without distorting the nature of the ideological layout of the composition, the second by offering the most complete availability and the most open mental disposition toward the goal to be reached".
Unfortunately, this does not happen as often as it should. I would take this opportunity to thank all those who contributed to the idea and realization of this event, above all the "N. Paganini" Conservatory, contributing in a concrete way to the creation of new opportunities for the spread of contemporary music.
Paganini: musician and composer.
What is the musical inheritance that he left us?
Paganini's inheritance is enormous; it has influenced both composers and performers from his day to today.
It is obvious that my interest in his figure concerns more the composer, but how can one not be subject to the fascination of his person? Paganini is "Paganini" in that it is an ensemble of all his multiple abilities and dimensions.
Are classical music and improvisation really antithetical?
Actually, every musical piece, in order to live, needs one or more interpreters to extol it and empower it according to their own intentions.
Every execution, therefore, can be so different so as to include almost a sort of "improvisation", either because it is planned for by the composer (just think of the aleatory zones* used by contemporary composers and that I also use in Intrusions, but in a more controlled form) or certain liberties left to the interpreter by the composer.
Actually, improvisation has always been a part of musical study, organists are obliged to do it and in part also harpsichordists, and for what reason should other instruments not do it? Bach must have been a genius improviser and wrote the masterpieces that we all know, but the ability to improvise does not come from nothing, it takes hours and hours of study to allow for automatic commands between thought and hands.
Do you think it is useful to insert an "improvisation" trial in a music competiti on?
To insert improvisation as a trial in a competition without adequate training beforehand is absurd (in Italy, aside from jazz training, it is practically non-existent).
It would be different if it were included in programs of study and then subsequently in competitions.
Can the lack of improvisation have to contributed the detachment of the public from classical music?
I don't think that the lack of improvisation typical of jazz is the cause of the audience's detachment from the music, just like I don't think that a young audience is detached from classical music and contemporary music - simply in many cases they only know that it exists in name and they do not have the linguistic means to approach it.
The solution is always the same. Make a longterm investment (twenty years) in schooling and basic culture, from nursery school to high school, but I am certainly not the first one to support this idea...
For the next edition of "Premio Paganini" a work has been commissioned from Azio Corghi, a new piece that the competitors will have to perform during the trials.
It is extremely important, and a great thing that the "Premio Paganini" should have decided to undertake such a route and I am very proud that this is happening in my city. Every instrumental competition should have an obligatory contemporary piece chosen from among a host of composers, just as it should be obligatory to include (and therefore study and perform) contemporary music in conservatory programs of study. By now, the global musical repertory is so broad that it has become necessary to diversify courses differently: early music, traditional repertoire and contemporary music that, we should not forget, includes more than sixty years of high level production, the majority of which has already passed into history. The future is certainly not to continue performing a strict repertory of a few centuries, but to make programs more varied and as interesting as possible, going through all the possibilities that our past and present offer.
Have you taken Azio Corghi's specialization courses?
Meeting Azio Corghi was fundamental for me. I studied with him at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, at the Chigiana Academy and at the Romanini Foundation and even now I try to meet up with him whenever possible. From him I learned professionalism, technique, and the sense and functioning of theatre. He was and he is still an extraordinary Maestro and a genius of a composer, I am sure that the piece for the Paganini competition will be fun and enchanting.
Can you tell us about your future projects?
There are many for next year, above all for theatre and orchestra, but to ward off any bad luck (that always has its role...) better not to say more.