- Title: Todos Los Fuegos El Fuego
- Instrumentation: 8 saxophone players
- Year: 2018 – 2019
- Duration: 89′
- Commissioner: Dag in de Branding and November music festivals with financial support of Fonds Podiumkunsten
- Premiere: 29th June 2019, Dag in de Branding festival, Zuiderstrandtheater, Den Haag, NL
- First performer: Amstel Quartet & Keuris Quartet, Maxim Shalygin – conductor
- Photos & videos: Michal Grycko
- Project designer: Anna Lee
- Project, CD crowdfunding campaign, PR manager: Anna Reshetniak
- Buy Score: Donemus Publishing
- Buy CD: TRPTK
- Listen online: Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube etc.
REVIEWS
TOP 5 The Best Classical Music of 2019
"Wouldn’t it be too much of a good thing, one could ask in advance – a one-and-a-half-hour piece, say, a Mahler symphony, for double saxophone quartet? Shalygin, however, himself conducting, got the job done with flying colours, in an idiom in which the most diverse stylistic elements entered into a peculiar symbiosis. Endlessly rising clusters, pulsing tone tapestries in a minimalistic cut, poetic-melodic intermezzi, and a quasi-orthodox hymn running aground in a quarter-tone yowl. Assisted by the phenomenally playing Keuris and Amstel Quartets, he moulded it all into a perfectly logical, resolute discourse: There’s no other way than this."
"Devastating, breathtaking.
It’s not difficult to point out the most impressive concert in November music. That was the fiery Todos los Fuegos el Fuego, for 8 saxophones by Maxim Shalygin. Shrouded in black en barefoot, he directed the musicians with measured gestures. They played on Saturday for over an hour with almost superhuman dedication and control. The musicians also regularly switched to other saxophones, allowing the sound colours to constantly change. The music was intense, shifting from understated beauty dry rattling rhythms and harsh, brutal sounds. A stirring event, on that the listeners could all agree."
"This is leading-edge music with substance and depth, and you should give it a try.
Both sound greater than the sum of their parts, often giving the impression of being more than just four instruments. This is a cycle of pieces packed with originality and innovative thinking, and has certainly rejuvenated my own feelings on the potential of the saxophone quartet.”
★★★★★
"It is neither an easy piece for the musicians nor for the listener, but when you get really involved, it is certainly rewarding. With a wide range of colours and dynamic means the performance by Keuris and Amstel is breathtakingly intense and exciting. With a wide range of colours and dynamic means the performance by Keuris and Amstel is breathtakingly intense and exciting."
10/10 CD ranking
"Perhaps the most amazing thing is that you hear things you've never heard before, but that they seem so natural that it seems as if they were always there. […]. Too many to mention, and all performed with incredible perfection by both quartets. These two CD's in the beautifully designed case are a true work of art."
TO ALL ALIVE
PROGRAM NOTE
Epigraph
Ces yeux ne t’appartiennent pas… où les as tu pris ?
Movements
I. I.C.E. (Internal Combustion Engine)
II. Death of a Mosasaurus
III. Spring, Breaking
IV. Ashes in Birth
V. Raising Waves
VI. Crabcade (Waterfall in Cancrizans)
VII. Stairway to Decay
VIII. Endless Mordent
Todos los fuegos el fuego is a musical cycle that immerses the listener for one hour in a mystical act, sparking off the imagination and opening up unknown emotional conditions.
Todos los fuegos el fuego for saxophone octet is a mysterious and exciting fusion of music and literature. For the second chapter of the lifelong SI M I L A R cycle, Shalygin draws inspiration from Todos los fuegos el fuego, arguably the most enigmatic book by the great Julio Cortázar. All the short stories in this collection have in common an exit into a parallel, magical reality, sometimes close to ours, sometimes strikingly different. Their forms provoke peculiar musical dramaturgical solutions, while an abundance of pseudo-musical forms allows for the creation of a unique atmosphere, using an expanded variety of performance techniques.
The overall structure of the Suite consists of eight parts played by eight saxophonists – as many as there are stories in the book (and syllables in the title, which, incidentally, sounds like a saxophone phrase in itself). The saxophone was chosen for a reason: for all his knowledge of and passion for music, it was jazz that attracted Cortázar’s attention the most. Jazz, and therefore the sound of the saxophone, was his muse and a constant presence in many of his most famous novels.
‘The saxophone is also involved in many mystical moments in music, literature and, not least, cinema – a fascination I share with him.’
Maxim Shalygin
© Paul van der Woerd, © Michal Grycko
