Sunday 27 November 2016, 8pm
Iancu Dumitrescu is considered one of the leaders of the spectral music trend at a worldwide level. In 1976 he founded the HYPERION Ensemble, proposing a new aesthetic in today’s music, hyper-spectral, based on the radiant power of sound, within its microcosmic complexity - which is questioned, analyzed, re-composed from a spectral perspective. Ana-Maria Avram is a composer, pianist, conductor, born in 1961 in Bucharest, Romania. She studied composition at the National University of Music- Bucharest and musical aesthetics at Sorbonne, Paris. She has been a member of the Hyperion Ensemble since 1988. Her music is affiliated with the spectral music trend and incorporates the outward semblance of abstraction of archetypal sound, achieving its full development in the synthesis of electroacoustic and instrumental sources.
“Dumitrescu is an imposing figure, and his presence immediately gave impetus to the proceedings before a note had even been sounded. There was a palpable tension as Dumitrescu led the musicians – all eyes fixed on the Romanian’s black-clad frame – through fitful bursts of discordant noise that bordered on rambunctious rock. Dumitrescu’s music works with sustain and release: distorted bowed guitar notes, scatter-shot drum fills, cavernous manipulations of the piano strings and fluttering clarinet parps all piled up, to be followed, with one sweep of the conductor’s arm, by heavy near-silence punctuated by the omnipresent digital rustles from the laptop. Despite not playing, Dumitrescu remained the focal point, his twisted, rapt facial expression the mark of a man inhabited by his music.” – Joseph Burnett, The Liminal (review of the performance at OTO in January 2013)
Ana-Maria Avram is a composer, pianist, conductor, born in 1961 in Bucharest, Romania. She studied composition at the National University of Music- Bucharest and musical aesthetics at Sorbonne, Paris. She has been a member of the Hyperion Ensemble since 1988. Her music is affiliated with the spectral music trend and incorporates the outward semblance of abstraction of archetypal sound, achieving its full development in the synthesis of electroacoustic and instrumental sources. She composed since now around 130 works, music for soloists, chamber music, music for orchestra, electronic music and computer assisted music including commissions from the Kronos Quartet (San Francisco) Ç 20 Jahrhundert È from Vienna, soloists from l’Orchestre National de France, orchestras as Bucharest Philharmonic Orchestra, Romanian National Orchestra, Romanian Radio Chamber Orchestra and L’Orchestre de Chambre de Roumanie amongst many others.
