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SERGIO MOLINA (1967)

QUINTET FOR ANOTHER TIME - for four guitars and piano (2006)

The piece is dedicated to Quaternaglia Guitar Quartet and the American pianist James Dick. The premiere was on February 10, 2007, at Round Top Concert Hall (TX), during the "III International Guitar Festival at Round Top", having James Dick and Quaternaglia as performers. The composer said: "When I received the invitation to write a quintet for piano and guitar quartet, I immediately reminded the day of my arrival in Round Top (TX) with my wife Clara. It happened on February 11, 2005, a Friday evening when we were kindly welcomed by Mr. Alain Declert. I remember of seeing under the glass that covered the living room table, an original copy of the concert program of the first performance of the Quartet for the End of Time (1941), by Olivier Messiaen. That piece of paper seems to want to break the chronological timeline, teasing the present, simultaneously, with its marvelous musical ideas and the sore memories of war. Exploring this context - Round Top 2005 versus Messiaen 1941 - I started to conceive a Quintet that, updating the great musical achievements of the past, could open a parenthesis in the present, and could also positively aim to Another Time, a time with harmony in diversity, proportions, and tensions in balance. The first movement, "Past", pay - with love - a tribute to the musical tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the necessary crossing of the main theme to the fatal, long, and painful funeral procession. The "Prayer without Words", second movement, happens in the present, and tries to work, also, in other levels: it is a necessary pause for contemplation and invocation, waiting for the appropriate moment to return to the path. The third and last movement, "The Mirror of the Enigmas", tries to go one step further: it proposes the familiarity among different rhythms, scales, modes, systems, asymmetries, games, passwords, cycles, lines, fragments, units, duels, and dialogues, all engaged in a tireless and optimistic search: from the past to Round Top!"


SERGIO MOLINA (1967)

FANTASIA NO FUBÁ - octet for four guitars and string quartet (2003)

Based on Tico-tico no fubá written by Zequinha de Abreu (1880-1935), Fantasia no Fubá's premiere was performed by Quaternaglia with Brasilia's String Quartet at Thomas Jefferson Hall, in Brasilia, on June 6, 2003.

In the piece, the composer uses the famous Brazilian choro as a theme for variations, where both ensembles dialogue, compete and join forces for the grand finale.

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