- Title: Severade
- Instrumentation: 9 cello players & 25 newly designed instruments
- Year: 2021
- Duration: 73′
- Commissioner: Cello Octet Amsterdam with the financial support of Fonds Podiumkunsten
- Premiere: 11th April 2021, Main Hall, TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht, NL
- First performer: Maya Fridman & Cello Octet Amsterdam
- Remarks: the instruments were developed by Maxim Shalygin in collaboration with visual artist and instrument maker Rob Van Den Broek (QEM Foundation). The Octosyn team (Elisabeth Muller, Cengiz Arslanpay, Martine Bloem and Paul Janssen) made an important contribution to the development and construction of the instruments.
- Buy Score: Donemus Publishing
REVIEWS
"With his mechanically driven sound sculpture, Shalygin reflects on the development of the cello. He seamlessly merges the sounds of the hundreds of years old acoustic instrument with those of a futuristic 'robot cello’."
"After the heartbreaking 'Lacrimosa' and the glowing flames of 'Todos Los Fuegos El Fuego', 'Severade' is a musical declaration of love to an area that is gripped by icy cold for part of the year"
The alluring peculiarity of "Severade" is to immerse deeply into unpredictable reveries of the posthuman utopia, colliding together three forms of life and matter: (I) the delicate sentience of the animal world (tape with the whale voices), (II) the human dimension (a newborn child with a scream reminding whale voice and vice versa, and foregrounded cello performer) whilst (III) the technical (artificial) form of life represented by instruments-prosthetics sprouting and sprawling like sonic seaweeds everywhere. The whole constellation spawns a huge wave coming from the impending future which would blanket us irresistibly.
FULL PERFORMANCE
PROGRAM NOTE
Severade is a spectacular journey through time, space, feelings and imagination. It reveals a west-east synthesis, referring to different genres: song, concert, oratorio, all in one bottle.
In Severade Shalygin delves deeply into the sound and history of the cello: in addition to the nine acoustic instruments of the Amsterdam Cello Octet and soloist Maya Fridman, he adds futuristic robot instrumentation that was developed especially for the piece in collaboration with the artist Rob van den Broek & team Octosyn. The creation process of the 25 newly designed instruments which together form a sculpture continued for more than a year.
These new instruments are a sound, visual and conceptual extension of the cello. The combination of the newly designed instruments with acoustic cellos enriches the sound spectrum and allows creation of the complex sound textures. The potentially infinite sound of the bourdon strings can slow down time, leaving the listener surrounded by a sense of timelessness. Different musical material can sound in different time dimensions at the same time; slow chorales against more virtuosic layers. In addition, the combination of cellos with the mechanical switching on and off of the new instruments offers the possibility of virtuoso hoketus textures with many layers.
With this combination of acoustic and mechanical instruments, Shalygin weaves a convincing blend out of Slavic emotionality and Western sobriety – precisely the ‘northern serenade’ to which the title Severade refers (a combination of the words Sever, Russian for ‘north’, and Serenade). These totally different worlds have become an integrated whole within the musical language and creative expression of the composer. He brings them together through the simplest and most difficult – love and the inner world of man.
© Paul van der Woerd
