María de Alvear (Compositora) 

Entrevista. El pasado mes de junio Wandelweiser Records editaba el último trabajo discográfico de María de Alvear. En Junio entre los cedés que salieron a la venta en ese mes os recomendamos este trabajo de María de Alvear «Besando el tiempo», sin duda un trabajo interesantísimo. Hemos hablado con Antoine Beuger sobre el CD y esto es lo que nos ha contado:

El pasado mes de junio Wandelweiser Records editaba el último trabajo discográfico de María de Alvear. En Junio entre los cedés que salieron a la venta en ese mes os recomendamos este trabajo de María de Alvear «Besando el tiempo», sin duda un trabajo interesantísimo.



Besando el tiempo es el último trabajo publicado de la compositora hispano alemana María de Alvear esta vez editado en Wandelweiser Records.  La editorial Wandelweiser Records se estableció en 1996 y ahora es conocida en todo el mundo por su programa radical y riguroso.

Besando el tiempo es una pieza que se compuso en 1995 en el espacio de cuatro días. Fue escrita con una notación muy específica y particular que María de Alvear utiliza para muchas de sus piezas. La obra fue compuesta originalmente para la flautista Caren Levine, quién también la estrenó en Salzau en 1995. "besando el tiempo" ya ha sido interpretada varias veces en todo el mundo por diferentes intérpretes, pero cuando María de Alvear escuchó la versión de Antoine Beuger, le pidió que la grabara.



María de Alvear

"Para mí, la interpretación de Antoine Beuger es la "lectura" más exacta que hay de mi obra. Incorpora la introversión perfecta por parte del intérprete, la que yo busco. El intérprete escucha la música como "el primer observador del compositor", y esa es la forma en que se toca la pieza aquí "










Hemos hablado con Antoine Beuger sobre el CD y esto es lo que nos ha contado:

(entrevista en inglés):

1. Ruth Prieto: Wandelweiser Records has just published a recording of María de Alvear's “Besando el tiempo”. What can you tell us about the CD?

Antoine Beuger: It has become a double CD. Because of my very slow pace in playing the work, taking time for pauses and very open phrasings throughout, its duration in my version is about 90 minutes. Maria wrote the piece 1995 in the course of 4 days. These days are marked in the score. The first 2 days are now on the first CD, day 3 and 4 on the other.

2. R.P.: What are we going to discover in this work?

Antoine Beuger: It is hard to say, because each time I play the piece I am becoming engaged in a new process of discoveries, of encounters rather: encounters with myself, with my physical and mental condition, my feelings, my constraints and my, sometimes unexpected, abilities as a flute player dealing with high and low, long and short, sometimes louder and mostly soft to very soft tones, with repetition, with change. It is like walking through my inner landscape with the score as a map. A geographical map can show me where to go or where about I am, but doesn’t know anything about the weather conditions or the plants that are growing this time of the year or about my condition as a walker (maybe I am tired or just stumbled over something on the path).
The score of “besando el tiempo” guides me through my inner landscape, but like the geographical map it doesn’t know about all the realities, that I am facing along the “walk”. I try to play the piece as innocently as possible, not trying to hide or to avoid anything that might occur. This makes the listening experience very, very intimate and personal. You are, with me, discovering a world of tones and phrases, “tunings” maybe, that all have a little life on their own and appear to one another and to “the world” in a most vulnerable and fragile way, defenceless and without identity papers, coming and going without accomplishing anything else than just passing.

3. R.P.: Here you are both performer and publisher. Has it been difficult to be art and part of this work?

Antoine Beuger: Not at all. Both Maria and I really wanted this CD to happen. We both run a CD label, so it could have been released either on World Edition or on Edition Wandelweiser Records. Since the piece has become so much “my” piece, as Maria emphasized more than once, it seemed evident to me, that it should be published by Edition Wandelweiser Records.

4. R.P.: What is missing today in the dissemination of music of present-day creation? Does it reach a sufficiently wide audience?

Antoine Beuger: I think music creation always takes place in the context of and on behalf of a specific musical practice, involving composers, players, listeners, venues, forms of gathering, ways of dealing with each other, etc. What is missing today, I think, is precisely that: situations, in which making and experiencing music together can become meaningful in an existential way. People forgathering to engender a space for sounds to appear, thus creating a space for themselves to appear to one another, an unconditional space of confidence, trust and mutual recognition. Maria’s piece, her earlier music in general, can only flourish and come to life in such situations. It has taken more than 20 years for “besando el tiempo” to find such a place: a concert at my home with some twenty friends giving me and Maria’s music the confidence and the protection to appear in all its defenselessness and openness. It was an utterly moving and hope giving experience for everybody involved. So the problem is not dissemination or reaching a possibly wide audience, but finding a place, where it can become really meaningful.

5. R.P.: Describe the creative process that led to the work on the CD?

Antoine Beuger: After this concert Maria urged me to record the piece and make a CD with it. Instead of going into a studio, I wanted to do the recording at my home, with a friend, André Möller, who is also a composer and does excellent recordings. He knows all about professional recording practices, but always finds completely unconventional approaches. We recorded the piece in one long session in a little room. Nothing in the recording suggests a performance situation, it is just me and my flute and Maria’s music, attentively listened to by André.
Where are you right now as a performer?I am more a composer than a performer and that’s probably how I perform. I am always happy to play (in) the music of my friends and to be part of a beautiful musical situation.

6. R.P.: How do you see the contemporary music scene today?

Antoine Beuger: I don’t think, there is “the contemporary music scene”. There are many, many scenes, some of them very much alive, some of them, especially the “official” contemporary music scene hovering between life and death in a zombie-like existence.

Más información sobre este cd en la web  Wandelweiser Records

y en la editorial World Edition


Las fotos de Antonie son cortesía del compositor