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March 9 , 2006
On recording Scelsi. By Frances-Marie Uitti
Frances-Marie Uitti, cellist extraordinaire, has a specialist relationship to the music of Giacinto Scelsi, having collaborated closely with the composer in the last 13 years of his life and having catalogued hundreds of hours of Scelsi’s improvisations for the Fondazione Isabella Scelsi. At the request of the Scelsi Foundation, she recently wrote about the experience of recording the album “Natura Renovatur”, where her solo performances are juxtaposed with the Münchener Kammerorchester’s performances of Scelsi’s music for strings. This all-Scelsi disc is released by ECM New Series on May 9 in Europe and on June 20 in the USA.
Working with the Munich Chamber Orchestra
Christoph Poppen, the conductor of the Munich Chamber Orchestra is a master violinist with an ear for fine tuned eloquency. His previous ECM recording, Morimur, of the Bach D minor Partita with the Hilliard Ensemble interspersed throughout, is a testament to adventuresome interpretation and a composer’s ear.
When I was asked to sit in on the rehearsals for the first ECM recording of Scelsi’s string works, Natura Renovatur, I was eager to work with him, and also to impart some of that special sonoral world that was the subject of many working hours with Giacinto.
In a dry rehearsal room, the orchestra read through the scores. Working with Christoph was a string player’s dream, his sensitivity to nuance, fine tuning of dynamics, and balance of colors soon rendered a hopeless acoustic into a luminous experience. Christoph says, “His sounds are as spiritual as his music. It is absolutely amazing how - with relatively simple means - he creates a sound world which is completely personal. And the range of his sounds is extremely wide: from the lightest vibration to a very heavy, nearly earthbound sound.”
Scelsi would often concentrate on high tessitura passages pushing them to almost unbearable tensile stretching, only to break in with a flood of basses; a rush of warmth and depth- his revelation of the third dimension in sound. The MCO is a remarkable group; they are chamber musicians with a string quartet mentality; big ears and hard work. I felt we could rehearse the most demanding details without tiring them - on the contrary - they became more involved in the difficulties as the work progressed.
Christoph tells, “On the first view the string techniques seem difficult to realize. But for an orchestra which is familiar to contemporary playing and where you can rely on the responsibility of every single player you can quickly achieve very good results. The difficulty is that Scelsi is mainly working with the possibility of mixing different sounds by various players, which makes it hard for a conductor to control every single detail at the same time. Either you need a lot of rehearsal time to be able to take everything apart, or you really have to be able to trust every single instrumentalist completely.
I personally did not go into his scores through a very analytic procedure, but trusted my intuition and let myself be carried away through the music itself, also in regards to the architecture - which I think worked. The structure to me seems to be organic, like a growing plant rather than a clearly designed building, which makes it a little difficult to analyze - even for yourself.”
In retrospect, I now remember one particular tape I heard while transferring Scelsi’s analogue ondiola improvisations to DAT. Being a monodic instrument, several improvisations were superimposed, The quality of these acoustic tapes were at times very grainy, and it seemed that there was also a version of the same superimposed in retrograde, building a thick massive tonal center of hoary sound. Rough, chordal, powerful. I never thought to mention this in our rehearsals, but when I attended the recordings in the Sendling church, I re-experienced that same ‘spreading’ and transparency of sound. Giacinto often said that his music should be played in a church, and it seems he embedded that sonoral vision in the tapes.
It was this experience with the MCO, just preceding my own recording, that inspired me to unleash “Ygghur”, to let it to soar through the space as a performance, uninhibited by the score, the microphones, fingers or strings - as I had done in so many rehearsals with Giacinto.
- Frances-Marie Uitti
On May 16, Frances-Marie Uitti gives a solo concert at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, where she plays Scelsi’s complete “Trilogia – I tre stadi dell’uomo”, and more.
At seven o'clock there will be an official presentation of "Natura Renovatur" promoted by the Scelsi Festival (Uitti's concert marks the conclusion of this year-long event), Santa Cecilia, Ducale/ECM and Audiogamma. Italian writer/journalist/critic Enzo Siciliano (also known as an actor in Pasolini's films) will participate in the presentation.
For more info please visit the website of the Scelsi Foundation (www.scelsi.it ) or the website of the Auditorium Parco della musica (www.auditorium.com).
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