venerdì 28 settembre 2012

Interview with Geoffrey Morris, third part



Italian Translation
I have realy enjoyed your recording about the guitar music by Aldo Clementi, how did it happens to you to record those music and how is your relationship between Mode Records?

My wife was studying lute with Paul Beier in Milano during 2001 and I came over and spent three months with her in Italy. I had played many works by Clementi both chamber and guitar pieces and wanted to play to him while in Europe. Gabriele Bonomo heard my CD ‘In Flagranti’ and was instrumental in putting me in touch with Aldo and helping me commission him for a new solo work. When I returned to Australia I recorded the solo peices on the back of other more commercial projects through the Australian Broadcasting Commission. Daryl Buckley from Elision was very helpful and he organised the chamber recordings including a piece Elision had commissioned from Aldo back in 1992 and he also took the recording to Mode.
Aldo is a masterful composer and such a fantastic ‘thinker’ on music. Many of his views on modern music I share. Soon I have an article on his music coming out in Contemporary Music Review for those interested.

I have, sometimes, the feeling that in our times music’s history flows without a particular interest in its chronological course, in our discoteque before and after, past and future become interchangeable elements, shall this be a risk of a uniform vision for an interpreter and a composer? The risk of a musical "globalization"?

I don’t think we are really in risk of a kind of artistic ‘globalization’ in our field because it is already so far outside the mainstream of popular music practice. In some ways being almost irrelevant or at best hidden from the wider musical public allows a certain freedom in terms of direction, interpretation etc. On the plus side things like the internet have made communication so easy and this can be great in the exchange of ideas and especially so in education. Growing up in Melbourne meant that I very rarely got to see top artists perform live but now I can just send my students to Youtube to hear and see great players.

Luciano Berio writes "the preservation of the past has a negative sense, as it becomes a way of forgetting music. The listener will get an illusion of continuity that allows you to select what seems to confirm that same continuity and censor everything that seems disturbino”, What role can take music and contemporary composers in this context?

In terms of programming recitals I now prefer the idea of mixing different musical era in a recital because here in Australia the audience for specialist new music events has really dwindled for notated contemporary music but has grown a lot for improvised music. I think by very careful programming an artist can illuminate the musical continuity that Berio spoke of. In terms of expanding our knowledge of disturbing elements to the musical cannon, those elements can be the most exciting areas to explore but this takes knowledge of performance practice, musical history and the ability to be accross the repertoire in a way that was previously not required by many performers.
What do you think about the discographic market crisis, with the transition to digital downloading in mp3 and all this new scenario?

Well mp3 could be a good thing but I still really like the older format in terms of the information in programme notes and the artistic aspect in packaging the disc. I understand the issues with illegal downloading though and who knows what the result of this will be long term.


to be continued

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