Concert per a orquestra

Feliu Gasull’s Concerto for Orchestra, the upshot of a commission from the Barcelona Symphony and Catalonia National Orchestra, stems from a reflection on silence, but not on silence meaning absence of sound; rather, inner silence and the difficulty we encounter when it comes to engaging in the ongoing dialogue unfolding in our brains. Based on the realisation that our brains are constantly thinking and never stop, Gasull seeks to deliver a musical portrayal of the process of transcendental meditation, one of the avenues to reaching inner silence. Accordingly, although the work is a Concerto to illustrate the splendour of the orchestra, it also follows the concept of a symphony poem, as its approach is founded on depicting the process that unfolds during meditation.

The work comprises four movements that are performed seamlessly. The first conveys chaos: it expresses ongoing brain activity and the complexity of stopping it. To be able to clear one’s mind, the unrelenting repetition of a mantra begins; it progresses in the second movement based on the rhythm of the soleá, a flamenco palo formed by a highly profound rhythmic mix of a meditative quality. This insistent rhythm begins very slowly and increases to the point of being performed at three times the initial tempo to lead us towards an overarching climax that culminates in silence. At the end of this crowning moment, a highly unconventional instrument in the orchestra appears; namely, the tuning fork, which produces a sound that fades steadily to silence in a natural fashion. As a result, the third movement is indeed silence: six seconds of silence. The fourth movement depicts the return to mental activity. This return to sound also unfolds steadily, firstly by drawing a bow across a vibraphone bar and then gradually incorporating the remaining instruments. It is a more cantabile movement in which the orchestra exhibits more inner harmony than in the remainder of the work. The score ends with a tiny coda in which a white voice performs a melody on a verse by Josep Carner in a fragment that does not strive to be a major vocal soloist intervention, but rather seeks to exude simplicity and plainness.

The existential approaches that have been cultivated by this work are indeed difficult to embody, but music is unquestionably an excellent medium in order to attempt this. Indeed, Aldous Huxley, author of the epic novel Brave New World, remarked: “After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”