Nuno Côrte-Real & Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano - Rock Symphonies (2023)

Rock Symphonies' is a collection of five symphonic works, 'Rock (tribute to Ligeti)', ''Concerto Vedras', 'Sinfonia Noa Noa', 'Todo o Teatro é um muro branco de música' and 'Abertura Secondo Novecento', composed between 2001 and 2018.

"The term 'symphonies' is not used here to designate a musical form, but rather in its original Greek sense of sounds that sound simultaneously and in reference to orchestral timbres", explains the record company, adding that "the term 'rock', the title of the first work presented, includes the popular cosmos of 'rock and roll', in which the energetic feeling and not the style are untamed by the listener".

About the piece 'Rock - Tributo a Ligeti', it was composed at the beginning of Côrte-Real's career, in 2003, "at a time when [he sought] to free himself from the academic style and the 'obligatory' aesthetics imposed by musical institutions" . "In this, as in other pieces from the same period, the composer seeks his own language, recovering some elements of ancient musical syntax, using musical resources prohibited by avant-garde erudition." In this piece, specifically, "the emphasis is placed on the rhythmic element and the use of repetition as a structural element".

"The piece consists of a long rhythmic ostinato over a static harmony that favors consonant intervals. Despite the title, this is not a piece in the style of Ligeti, but a festive celebration of this [Hungarian] composer who was, in the second half of the 20th century , a notable example of system independence. On the other hand, the unpretentious, minimal and heavy writing, and the primary and syncopated rhythms seem to refer to the universe of rock music", continues Solo Music.

The 'Concerto Vedras' was composed in 2001, and is considered by the record company as "a seminal composition in Côrte-Real's career", which coincides with the end of the composer's stay in the Netherlands, after six long years of study.

This work also translates "a liberation from academic aesthetics and the impersonal style 'imposed' by musical institutions seeking to reaffirm their own style. A work dictated by a strong affective and emotional charge, a nostalgic tribute to the city of Torres Vedras, where the composer has grown up." This play premiered at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in New York.

'Sinfonia Noa Noa' (2018) is a symphonic tribute to the French painter Paul Gauguin, "an inspiring and exemplary figure for the composer, a symbol of freedom".

The symphony "seeks to translate into music the exuberant chromatic universe, the exoticism and the Tahitian perfume (the 'noa noa') that emanates from Gauguin's painting."

The piece 'Todo o Teatro é um Muro Branco de Música' is "a concert opening inspired by the last section of the poem 'Chuva oblíqua', by Fernando Pessoa" - "The composer attributes to the clarinet and the piano a concertant function, intending to give back to the music the human and affective dimension that the arid and geometric art of the avant-garde had suppressed", explains the record label.

In 'Abertura Secondo Nocento' (2006), Nuno Côrte-Real "'travels' to the second half of the 20th century, in all its pluralism and diversity".

According to "the academic explanation, it is a time dominated by avant-garde absolutism, a time in which, based on a system of prohibitions, auditory perception and aesthetic emotion are suppressed and music is seen as an inferior art".

The composer "rejects this reductive vision and proposes to celebrate this half century of enormous richness and plurality, in which such diverse music and composers of the most varied stylistic lines coexisted".

"Côrte-Real uses cryptographically, hidden in the score, various techniques or stylistic references associated with the Secondo Novecento, such as, for example, serial techniques or simple evocations of film music, but refuses all prohibitions that oppose a sensitive musical articulation. And The end result is an explosion of ecstasy."