Fernando Mencherini - CD PAN 3037

Fernando Mencherini

F. Mencherini

UN GIARDINO A MENTE VUOTA
for harp, winds and percussions (1990) - 9'40"

SEMEN
for flute (1989) - 11'35" - [Score available]

CARAVAN TRIO
for clarinet, sax and piano (1989) - 12'30"

LE ZATTERE
for violino and piano (1991-92) - 8'33"

DIVARICANTO 3°
per sassofono baritono e pianoforte (1991-92) - 10'27"

RAMI DEL RE
per quindici strumenti (1989-90) - 14'52"

Ensemble Harmoniemusik
Fabio Fabbrizzi - Chiara Tonelli, flute
Paolo Pollastri, oboe
Marco Ortolani - Giovanni Riccucci, clarinet
Paolo Carlini, bassoon
Paolo Faggi - Gianfranco Dini, horn
Giuseppe Blengino, trumpet
Mauro Malatesta, trombone
Lucia Bova, harp
Morgan Tortelli, percussions
Luigi Cozzolino - Tiberu Horvat, violin
Dimitri Mattu, viola
Giovanni Lippi, cello
Paolo Frondoni, double bass
Claudio Rufa, conductor

"Divaricanto 3°" (Demo .mp3 - 30 sec. - 180 Kb)

Edipan Edition
CD PAN 3037 - price 15.00 Euro -

Fernando Mencherini

CD info

Fernando Mencherini or the capturing of sound
The capturing of sound, or rather the ability to give consistency to instability, is one of the extraordinary aspects of Mencheri-ni's recent production. Since the end of the eighties, Mencherini's works present their own being present just as they are. The plasticity and the internal flexibility of the dynamic relationships carry the elements of the composition not towards another thing or another place, but towards its own taking place. Mencherini is one of the few composers who has his own original, deep and very up-to-date thought, and he knows only too well that the free spirit's life is a life in proximity, vindicating the value of the closest things; living in the proximity of things is already a way of freeing oneself from the aporia of logical speculation and from the codifications of bureaucratic reality: the closer one is to a hygienic thought, an ecological way of life, the farther one is from the mechanisms of the institutionalised "modus operandi". The sonorous result of these last works of Mencherini is different compared to that of his production of ten years ago, when comportment norms for the sounds were introduced into the chaos of the matter; now that the use of control grids has been abolished, the sound is liberated and no longer constricted in mechanisms (no matter how advanced). Mencherini's geniality consists in absorbing the notion of the quantum of non-variation, that is to say that non-variation and perturbation co-exist right from the start. The information of the single parts, aspects and elements of a musical piece is defined, but not expressable because it is fundamentally arbitrary: it can be interpreted in thousands of ways in an infinite hermeneutical game.The relationship between the whole and the parts in each of these pieces is quite complex (as defined by Allan, who considers that complexity implies an elimina-table element of ignorance). We never know whether we're in the presence of a single unit or a composition of units. There are no analytical certainties and it is easy to drown in the hermeneutic circle but it is a sweet drowning which enriches our aesthetic experience, for Mencherini's writing produces a syntactic and semantic opening that surprises us.Music writing is an abstractum, but in Mencherini, by means of connections and involvement with what is lived, it becomes a concretum. What brings us back to the sphere of natural phenomena is the use of movement which leads to an exasperation of the instrumental technique, a research into new possibilities which Mencherini has experimented since his very first pieces and which, in this CD, finds a solutionwhich seems definitive, as in the case of the wind instruments of the Caravan trio (1989), above all as for as the multiple sounds are concerned. The author relates that the title of this Trio derives from the fact that he had imagined a caravan attempting to cross a rocky desert; semantic extra-musical plots of connections, and also imaginary literary inspiration, are constant in his works where a kind of semantic hallucination occurs, for a meaningful complex universe is evoked without any possibility of reducing it to a scheme of interpretation. The hermeneutic circle has gone mad and the mark carries with it the impression of the abyss: it is a mark that becomes fascinating or fearful according to the forces and elements put forward.
Renzo Cresti

UN GIARDINO A MENTE VUOTA (1990)
for harp, winds and percussions
The title is a phrase taken from "Silence" by}. Cage.At first, I wasn't thinking that much about the garden; I could see a great number of pots of water heating up and boiling at various times. The harp's solo part has, in fact, an effervescence similar to that of boiling water: sound matter lives constantly on the limit (where it is very difficult to find well defined units and proportions, which are essential qualities for a garden), in an "Incerto tempore" which doesn't mean "indeterminate" but "not locatable" due to the speed with which it moves. It's like discovering the world of ideal relations at a close distance. The live being is similar to a garden, in continual evolution and transformation.

SEMEN (1989)
for flute
This piece is made up of material of different nature which alternates in a free and fantastic way, without any predictable successions. A vertical movement given by the overlapping of three different breaths, lets out a great quantity of energy and leads to a new form of polarisation of the matter: in fact, this passes through the three modes of breath, undergoing a circular mutation which tends to concentrate itself in ever-changing frenetic figures. (The Semen is the most important non-geometric module of drawing in Central Java, and it is the symbol of divine energy deriving from the Indian concept of creation).

CARAVAN TRIO (1989)
for clarinet, sax and piano
This is a very crude piece, but, at the same time, it is rich in sound, albeit a piercing sound which is cried, not sung, and which is tormented by its own consistency that doesn't allow it any clear articulation. All the sound moves in dramatic progressions with sudden and vibrant releases.

LE ZATTERE (1991-92)
for violino and piano
The rafts represent a process of gradual assimilation between two opposite musical units alternating periodically. The numerous modes of interaction fulfilling this process conform to the basic principle which I would define "time balancing". It acts on subtle elements such as echoes and metronomic displacements, which, like wandering influences slowly tend to generate a state of aggregation, not necessarily meaning a grouping together, but implying an organic assimilation resulting from a "natural" and gradual transmutation and proceeding gradually from the feeblest elements.

DIVARICANTO 3° (1991-92)
for baritone sax and piano
for baritone sax and pianoDevoid of a point of balance owing to the overlay of different time spans and thus distorted by its very nature, the piece breaks out, jolts and tosses, shunning to be pinned down.The two instruments never coincide, except in the beloved final D, but share a common mode of constructing the musical phrases - with ostinato, vertiginous leaps, brief thematic fragments; however, while the sax never turns back, the piano tends to halt the flow with short repeated notes placed with no care for strategy, to confirm the piece's opening out.

RAMI DEL RE (1989-90)
for chamber orchestra
The idea is that of a stringed instrument tuned accoding to a dodecaphonic scale;some of these strings resound, at irregular intervals, according to their own harmonic series.Thus, we find ourselves before two musical systems in distinct contrast amongst themselves. The sound has a double entity which moves and articulates itself, organising itself in thousands of different ways. A multi-dimensional idea is developed and it's continuity is given by a series of relationships amongst the changes. The result is a "complex Theme", that is a network of various connections which can no longer be brought back to the original series since they have transformed themselves into the branches of one sole system.
Fernando Mencherini

FERNANDO MENCHERINI (Cagli, 1949 - 1997) studied at the "G. Rossini" Academy of Music in Pesaro, following in particular the courses on Electronic Music held by W. Branchi.He gained a name for himself in various international competitions: Valentino Bucchi, Rome, 1981; SIMC, Aarhus, 1983, Budapest, 1986; Trio Basso Interna-zionaler Kompositions Wettbewerb, Koln, 1989.His works have been performed at many festivals in Italy and abroad, transmitted by various European radio-stations and recorded on disc by Edipan, BMG Ariola and Contempo Records.

ENSEMBLE HARMONIEMUSIK wasborn recently from an idea of Claudia Rufa and Paolo Pollastri with the view to perform principally the Twentieth-Century music. The Ensemble is formed of the principal peformers of the Orchestra della Toscana and the Teatro Comunale di Firenze. The basic organic is formed by 15 members to which other instruments could be added depending on the necessity.