Categories
ACOUSTIC INSTRUMENTS AND ELECTRONICS

Stecche

(2008) piano, hyperviolin and live electronics [12’]

Premiered at Sala Tartini del Conservatorio “Giuseppe Tartini”, Trieste, November 24th 2010

Piano: Gianni Della Libera

Live electronics: Roberto Doati

Realized with a Fellowship from Kulturhuset USF in Bergen (N)

The piano part is based on Grieg Slåtter, the Norwegian Peasant Dances op. 72 for piano (n. 1, 6 and 14). Along the first two pieces the performer plays on the piano  just with  the left hand, while the right hand is equipped with one of the sensors made by Matteo Ricchetti in 1999 for my bastone armonico (a piece for violin, hyperviolin and electronics). The hyperviolin is a three sensors box to capture the right and left hand of a violin player, so to say is an extension of the violin instrument.

As these Grieg pieces are piano arrangements from Norwegian folk music for violin (or better: for Hardingfele, a violin with 4 or 5 resonating understrings), the pianist is acting with the right hand as if she/he was bowing on a violin. In the third piece the sensor is worn on the left hand, and the performer plays on the piano with both hands. The captured gestures are always used to control the live electronics transformations of the piano sounds.

Right hand wearing tilt sensor from the Ricchetti’s Hyperviolin.

The score for the three pieces shows a growing degree of  “processing” the Grieg materials: Stecche (1) is a quotation of very simple articulations in Grieg n.1, Stecche (2) is a kind of rewriting the original score of n. 6, Stecche (3) is a total distorsion of the original n. 14.

The live electronics part is basically simulating the resonances of the Hardingfele understrings, sometimes multiplied through convolution with the piano resonances.

Stecche was written during a residence at Kulturhuset USF in Bergen (Norway).