Plural Ensemble & Yuko Kakuta

Plural Ensemble
Yuko Kakuta, soprano

‘Zement’ (2023) Carlos Bermejo (1963) 15’
‘Meister Eckhart: Mystical Song’ (2019) Fabián
Panisello (1963) 15’
‘Plural Edings’ (2023) Mercedes Zavala (1965) 12’
‘Arpège’ (1986) Franco Donatoni (1927-2000) 13’

*With the support of the Ernst Von Siemens Foundation

The Plural Ensemble proposes a programme for this year’s Ensems Festival involving two world premieres by Mercedes Zavala, who expressly prefers to reserve a surprise for the audience at the premieres, as well as Carlos Bermejo with a work by the composer and conductor Fabián Panisello, who
will conduct the concert and a 20th century classic, ‘Arpège’ by Franco Donatoni.

Although it is difficult to talk about a works still in progress, Carlos Bermejo explains that for him the fundamental challenge of his new composition, ‘Zement’, lies in creating a kind of space or sound resonance for the semantic density of Herta Müller’s text, Atemschaukel.

Panisello’s work, ‘Meister Eckhart: Mystical Song’,
commissioned by the 58th Cuenca Religious Music Week, puts forward the antithetical spirituality of Meister Eckhart through a reworking of the “ejaculatory” prayer from the hesychast tradition of the early centuries of the Christian era, bringing it up to date in terms of elements such as the decomposition of words into melismatic vowels and texts spoken at high speed in the manner of oriental mantras similar to ejaculatory prayers.

In ‘Arpège’, Donatoni proposes a perfect succession of material transitions that make up and break down harmonic matter through the use of arpeggio.