#165– September 19, 2022
The Reason, by Spanish composer, conductor and teacher Carlos Pellicer is our Composition of the Week.
The world premiere took place on July 22, 2022 at the Žofín Palace, Prague, Czech Republic, during the 19th International WASBE Conference, by the Korean Wind Orchestra conducted by Cheolwoong Lee.
The Reason is cast in two movements, 1. Think less, feel more; 2. Strength.
It has a duration of 13 minutes and it is scored for a standard wind band setting, with optional string bass and five percussion parts.
“The Reason is an intimate tour of our feelings through music. The lived and the desired, the most beautiful and the unexpected, the remembered and the ones we need to forget. A reason, we just need to find a reason for it all, to make sense of our happiness. We are unconscious in thinking that it cannot happen to us, that they seem almost human experiences, feelings and experiences, even unattainable. The extreme situations we have experienced in recent years have perhaps confused us and impoverished our dreams. We stopped feeling like children, and we stopped feeling like we had won by meeting. A war always asleep, less and less… an unexpected pandemic. All this has prevented us at some point from waking up every morning dreaming, living without a clock, waiting for something to happen, even if it had not been the moment. We reflect too much, we feel little and we lack strength.
The music written in ‘The reason’ wants to lead us to convince ourselves that we can start to believe the opposite and we can even feel it.
The first movement of this diptych for wind orchestra aims to invade our hearts, that place that only we can truly access. Lead us to ‘think less, and feel more’ through possible reasons that each one can recognize if they have been lucky enough to be able to identify them without more: a constant dialogue of looks, perhaps, of caresses, do it towards the stars? Maybe. And we can? Sure we can. We just need to let ourselves go, not wait for any other train and get on the one that makes us happy, the one that makes us heal through the eyes, despite the silence, or the emptiness. To become almost human, to be true.
The last part of the work aims to be impressive, from start to finish. Just a few minutes to experience that ‘strength’ that sometimes we assume we don’t have, but it always resurfaces, sooner rather than later. Living like this, we want to live like this despite everything. We are stronger if we smile more, if we try at least, and we only need to convince ourselves of it. Maybe we need some help. Something or someone to connect with. Trust, why not, in that reason that has made us feel more, think less, and make us stronger. That reason we want to be with us indefinitely or wait for it forever. Time is infinite, it never stops. We can wait to get it. The important thing is to get it.
I hope to fulfill my wish, to travel with you on this intimate journey through music, and to get you to recognize, like me, what your REASON could be.” (Program notes by composer)
Carlos Pellicer has been the principal conductor of the Sociedad Unión Musical de Cañada, the Agrupació Musical de Villalonga, and currently of the Unió Musical de Llutxent (Spain). He has also performed as a guest conductor in different bands in Spain as well as in other countries such as Poland, the United States or Italy.
More on Carlos Pellicer
http://carlospellicer.es
