V. Festival Contemporáneo 2025 del Festival Internacional de Música de Canarias

José Luis Perdigón: Io

for six voices (2025) ^WP

Carola Bauckholt: nein allein

for five voices (1999/2000)

Salvatore Sciarrino: Madrigali

for five to seven voices (2008)

Neue Vocalsolisten

Johanna Vargas, soprano

Susanne Leitz-Lorey, soprano

Helena Sorokina, mezzo-soprano

Martin Nagy, tenor

Guillermo Anzorena, baritone

Andreas Fischer, bass

Of all instruments, the voice has undoubtedly been one of the most important laboratories since the 20th century: Joan La Barbara, Cathy Berberian and Fátima Miranda are just a few examples of the extended voice. This programme presents three ways of inhabiting the voice beyond the emotional transmission of a text or its ornamental capacity, achieving extreme virtuosity, as Wagner taught us. Salvatore Sciarrino takes up the Renaissance madrigal and composes miniatures that return to the origins of the voice: ‘When the voice has surrendered to silence, only the mouth, the cavity, the saliva remain,’ says the composer. And from this elementary physicality, one can only reconstruct. Many of his Madrigali explore sounds as old as humanity itself: lamentation, sobbing, or articulations that connect us to nature. Echoes–the sound of mountains and caves–birdsong–perhaps our oldest form of music–and the dreaded silence that ultimately enables us to hear. Carola Bauckholt’s ‘Nein allein’ plays with a well-known fact: sometimes it is not so important what is said, but how it is said. That is why the work explores different ways of saying »yes« and ‘no’. A seemingly simple gesture, but one full of emotional, social and political nuances: there is no such thing as neutral speech.

José Luis Perdigón, in turn, invites us to think not only about how sound is transmitted, but also about where it is transmitted to. The starting point is the image of Io, one of Jupiter’s moons, where intense volcanic activity coexists with a very thin sulphur dioxide atmosphere. Sound exists because conditions for its propagation prevail here on Earth. But what if these conditions were to change? How does sound behave in relation to other landscapes, to the air and to bodies? The work creates a tension between this extreme atmospheric fragility and the volcanic violence translated into language, while suggesting the ever-present possibility that not everything can be perceived, known or understood. Sometimes sound remains only a hint, a trace.

(Marina Hervás/Original contribution for the 5th Contemporary Festival 2025 of the Canary Islands International Music Festival)