Character Works
During the second of the last century half, when the manifestos became speechless, the composers were thrown into the constructions of discourses about the creative act and the ups and downs between the continuities and historical ruptures. On the post-avant-garde stage, many forgot the difference between the mask and the face, although the explosion of trends, techniques, aesthetics and procedures would push them to wear one made of scraps, to lose their own voice under it. A context the multiplied the walls and the sections in a process of control and ghettoization of music.
Joan Guinjoan, whose work is one of the most solid of that period and who is already considered as a classic at the beginning of our century, runs away from what we have described in the previous lines.
His unique horizon was freedom, from sensitivity because of the sensual dimension of sound. We are talking about a voracious composer, avid of references especially in his middle period, during the consolidation of his creative personality. However, the great richness and diversity of genres and referents in his music never result in eclecticism or dilettantism, because his ear is capable of absorbing hetero- genous features and endowing them with unity and consistency.
These works let us draw a silhouette of a musician who is far away from manifestos and normative aesthetic, in love with the creative audacities that pushed him to permanent research. The fruit of all this is the systematic exploration of piano expressive possibilities, enriched by an endless imagination which find sstimuli in a myriad of sources and traditions. Listening to this selection, a robust, constructive vigour reminds us classicism. But in these works the classical balance is nourished by the vitality of the pre- vious imbalance, and crystallises in an expressionist impressionism that never leaves the vital aesthetic emotion. Alfonso Calderón de Castro knows how to extract the richness and diversity of colours of Guinjoan’s writing, armed with a great sonorous versatility in colours and dynamics. An anthological pianist fed by specific aspects such as agility or flexible phrasing, but mainly because of the depth of his concept and architectonical vision in his approach to Guinjoan’s piano works. Tres petites peces occupies a special place in the catalogue, in an also decisive moment, the same year of the foundation of Diabolus in musica together with Juli Panyella. A kind of turning point after a pause, which would give fruit in a fruitful stage. Timedelaying chords inaugurate Tres petites peces with Constellacions, deeply contemplative and plastic one. The richness of textures in Dinàmica de timbres i intensitats, like the one with Faustian reminiscences Ambient i ritmes, would serve as a paradigmatic example of Guinjoan’s ability to extract from the piano an infinite palette of nuances, thanks to the analytical and formal understanding of Calderón de Castro. The dedication to his Maestro Cristòfor Taltabull (1888–1964) is significant: the one that the critic Sebastià Benet described as “the providential man for contemporary Catalan music” and yet we have not allowed him to transcend.
Células no 1 and Células no 3 belong to the same period and they are the germ of much of his creation in the agitated years, in the search for new procedures, which would finally be unveiled in his last period. The pieces are constructed from the juxtaposition of minimal isolated elements, which explore the extreme registers and the percussive treatment of the instrument, with interval- lic games and constant dynamic alterations. A very free serialism, especially in Células 3, and in any case a circumstantial resource in his catalogue, practically attached to his production during the seventies. Sub- sequent is Autógrafo, whose dra- matic charge needs a focused reading, which is able to underline the tensions that multiply in a miniature of little more than a minute. Calderón Castro offers here an approach endowed with all that, managing with precision of concept all the mean- derings of the score.
Among his last works we find La Llum naixent, inspired by a poem by Antoni Clapès, which is a hymn to vitalist hope: and in the small breeze of dawn, you will hear the grass murmuring an old song, perhaps a prayer, addressed to the rising light. The delicate and melancholic Bon dia Francesc, with the memory of Francesc Farré, offers another face of the composer, lyrical, close, effusive and spontaneous. A sort of glowing bridge in the last part of the album. In this, Guinjoan knows how to play with the param- eters in such a way that we hear Mompou’s naturalness, the musical substance of Homs or the expressive refinement of Chopin, without forgetting listening to Guinjoan. In short, the impressions that this music awakens in him, from his own universe. In Nocturno– Una página para Rubin- stein with a Post-romantic and Lisztian soul, we find a sort of parenthesis in his catalogue, an intimate look at his first stages as pianist, from which his own piano literature has been nourished. Like Recordant Albéniz — a work highly esteemed by Guinjoan, capable of evoking the work of Albéniz with few reit- erative elements. Cadenza a homage to Mompou is written in a period of maturity and deep timbral investigation, closely connected to the Avant-Garde of the last century. Recordant Homs, as in other tribute pages, materialises Guinjoan’s creative reception of tradition, in this case from material taken from the work of Joaquim Homs, to elaborate freely his own discourse. An eloquent and meaningful tribute, which Calderon de Castro approaches with the musicality and naturalness in phrasing that requires it. The structural simplicity of Recordant Millàs based on short variations, part of the mediaeval Chanson Le roi Renaud. A small piece of goldsmith’s work where the melodic aspect stands out. A piece that evolves from the contemplative to the energetic and brilliant mood, where the pianist moves through with agility and clarity, non-exempt of the density required by the work. This is a score that stands out among his late works, read here from cleanliness, precise and masterly management of rubato. All of them, from dif- ferent periods, are examples of the composer’s ingenuity in distilling the essential elements of other music, inspired by them, and integrating them into his own discourse with a marked personality. A parade of masks that merge with the unmistakable Guinjoan’s face. Jeane Hersh argued that when listening to music, tempo unfolds listener own life. Listening to these works give us back the time recovered, the one which escapes from the conscious analysis, because it is the fruit of a true artist like Guin- joan, whose duty, without concessions, was always dictated by instinct and creative freedom.
