Search - Frances-Marie Uitti :: Giacinto Scelsi: Trilogia / Ko-Tha

Hauntingly original voice

Rachel Abbinanti (tusai1@aol.com) | Chicago | 06/01/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Scelsi who lived in Rome,just across from the Roman Forum found their durable longetivity an imposition, he wondered if his music would indure. Scelsi lived as a recluse most of his life, as a young man he travelled in the East,learning Sanskrit,two experiences that have remained part of his creative life.(he has vocal works in Sanskrit) It has only been since the early Eighties that we even know his music, and now virtually everything has been recorded, at least his seminal works. Any work written for strings is considered the primary part of Scelsi's creativity. He thought of each string as inhabiting its own timbral world. Frequently in scoring his string works he will separate each line or system into two to three lines, one for each string. Uitti here is long a Scelsi devotee, she understands his music and has the interpretive imagination to bring a sense of other-worldly qualities to these "trilogias" Scelsi's music involves the long sustained line frequently colouring a tone changing its timbre,like the vast microscopic lifeworlds contained on the sonic reutterence of a single tone.He frequently changes strings so to obtain a different timbre a different perspective, one more resonant the other dull and unattractive. Morton Feldman called Scelsi the Chas. Ives of Italy. His work has those qualities,the introspection,but none of Ive's more social pronouncements with vernacular songs. Scelsi's music remains within itself,and you always sense the East, at least in Scelsi's voice."