The Gala Concert of the Young Musicians Award (Prémio Jovens Músicos), which took place on September 29th at the Grand Auditorium of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, was an opportunity to listen to the première performance of the new work for orchestra by Sérgio Azevedo, “Erasing Mahler”, composed in response to a commission of the Guimarães 2012 European Capital of Culture. The event, whose 26thedition took place this year, was included in the 50th Anniversary of the Gulbenkian Orchestra, which under the baton of Joana Carneiro also performed the Concerto for Viola and Orchestra by William Walton, with the participation of Ricardo João Cabral Neves Gaspar, Young Musician of the Year, winner of the Young Musicians Award in the A Category (soloists), as well as the Sinfonietta – Homage to Haydn, by Fernando Lopes-Graça.

Gustav Mahler is one of the composers from the beginning of the 20th century, who with his music, together with Richard Strauss (his rival and friend at the same time), carried to the limits, not only the principles of the tonal system, but also the orchestral machine, determining in this context the end of an era. It is precisely this atmosphere of fin de siècle, which inspired Sérgio Azevedo to compose the new work for orchestra, with Gustav Mahler in the background. As we can read in the composer’s programme notes: “Mahler represents, perhaps more than any other composer from the History of Music, the end of an era: following the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the passage to the modern world (…). A masquerade under a profusion of beautiful melodies, of a brilliant orchestration, of a sound mass originating from gigantic orchestras; death is lurking, but we keep ignoring it. As the Viennese in 1914, we waltz unconcerned, while outside our world collapses silently.”

Sérgio Azevedo’s new piece, which has a duration of only 12 minutes, what compared with the gigantic structures of Mahler’s symphonies gives a sensation of being only a sigh, is in a postmodern manner constructed of quotations (one could recognize for example phrases from Gustav Mahler’s Symphony no. 1, the third movement, which begins with the “Frère Jacques” melody in a sinuous minor mode), or motives “in the style of the Austrian composer” presented in a form of collage. Despite the choice of an intriguing and potentially interesting title, alas the musical content of “Erasing Mahler” did not present any musical idea, which would provoke curiosity or create any kind of dialogue with Mahler’s work; or perhaps this piece is supposed to be only an incentive to recall the discographyof the Austrian composer’s symphonies (for example the famous interpretation of Leonard Bernstein)?

“A symphony is like the world, it should embrace everything”, said Gustav Mahler, and in fact, all of his symphonies are a conglomerate of complex harmonies, Wagnerian unending melodies, military marches, popular songs, religious hymns and renaissance masses, allusions to other composers, but also of philosophical concepts constituting the programmatic threads of the music (like, for example, the programme of evolutional character of the Symphony no. 3, which was to be inspired by the writings of Schopenhauer and Friedrich Lange, among others). The richness of Mahler’s symphonic universe does not deserve the reduction, which Sérgio Azevedo offers us in his work, with the Mahlerian motives interweaved or simply passed through the different sections of the orchestra. Using and making allusions to the music of other composers (from the past and present), crossing the genres, deconstructing and reconstructing, quoting, creating collages, all these compositional techniques, used in a creative way can result in original and brilliant works (what unfortunately is not the case of this Sérgio Azevedo’s attempt, which, referring to cookery metaphors, seems to be a badly prepared appetizer made of the leftover ingredients). Various (brilliant and original) examples should be emphasised here: Luciano Berio’s emblematic “Sinfonia”, an apparently neurotic journey through the history of music, which aims at reclaiming the postromantic symphony, annexing, precisely, the music of Gustav Mahler (in the third movement one can hear in the background the Scherzo from his Symphony no. 3, whose progress in being interrupted by quotations of hundreds of other composers, from Bach to Boulez, all of them dovetailed in an ingenious way with Mahler’s score); the postmodern approach of the Polish composer Paweł Szymański, whose best example is certainly his “Quasi una Sinfonietta”, in which we encounter all our favourite gestures from classical music interrupted by a tom-tom beating, a kind of montage cut; the pastiches by Alfred Schnittke; or finally the post-minimalistic style of John Adams (and certainly other names and titles could be multiplied here). Before this list of ironic pieces, complex structures and also layers of contexts, references and meanings to be discovered by the audience, “Erasing Mahler” seems to be a not very well thought out compositional exercise, not only because it is lacking challenges (pleasing the public is not always the best strategy as it restrains creativity and suffocates the individualism, unless it becomes our principal objective) and more profound contextualization, but also for “ridiculing” the work of such an emblematic and complex composer from the history of music, as Gustav Mahler, whose music, by the way, already represents the richness of cultural contexts and references. So what is the point in making references to references or quotations of quotations in a direct and not quite original manner?

It is distressing to find out that within the Young Musicians Award, realized by the RTP (Portuguese National Radio and Television), this year in partnership with the Guimarães 2012 European Capital of Culture and integrating the programme of the Gulbenkian Orchestra 50th Anniversary, one makes commissions to Portuguese composers who not only fail to conjure any innovative approach, but are also incapable of conceiving a dialogue with either contemporary or the past, regardless of what language or style was chosen by the composer.

The two following pieces of the Young Musician’s Award Gala Concert were the Concerto for Viola and Orchestra (1929) by William Walton and the Sinfonietta – Homage to Haydn by Fernando Lopes-Graça (work commissioned by the Music Service of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 1980), which according to the stylistic divisions of the 20th century history of music can be labelled as neoclassical. In the first one we could appreciate the capacities of the Young Musicians Award Soloist Winner, whose performance presented a potential for a development of a fruitful career. In the second one the stage was completely taken over by the Gulbenkian Orchestra conducted by Joana Carneiro, yet whose interpretation of Fernando Lopes-Graça’s piece left a sensation of dissatisfaction. In the manner of Bela Bartók or Paul Hindemth Lopes-Graça’s music is full of contrasts, dissonances, complex and “simple” melodies, rhythmical irregularities, which deserve an emphasis in the performance. Unfortunately the communication between the conductor and the orchestra did not function in order to carry out in a satisfactory way all the requirements and nuances of Fernando Lopes-Graça’s work.

After the Gala Concert of the Young Musicians Award we remain expectant, waiting for new works integrated in other events of the Orchestra Gulbenkian Anniversary, which will be taking place throughout the Foundation’s Concert Season 2012/13, which, contradicting the words of Rui Lagartinho in the special edition of the Público journal dedicated to this occasion, is not THE oasis in the Portuguese music panorama, but only one of various proposals (even though conditioned by the crisis), which integrate the national musical agenda 2012/13.

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