)
With a dozen pieces performed by Alfonso Gómez, almost all of the Basque composer Gabriel Erkoreka's piano music can be heard on this monographic CD, published by Kairos.
Gabriel Erkoreka himself was a pianist at the beginning of his career, playing with the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra. The two pieces that begin this recording, Nubes and Nubes II (Clouds in Spanish), written at the age of 25, already give a glimpse of the sonic perspectives to come: an obstinate exploration of resonance and its different modes of maintenance(Nubes), a playing that unfolds in extreme registers and an energy of gesture favouring kinetic movements. The piano is generous, richly timbred, inscribing itself in a fluctuating temporality(Nubes II). These are all constants that run through the Four Ballads (2017-2021) composed more than twenty years after the early diptych: masterpieces of the composer paying homage to great beloved figures.
In Ballade N°1 (Pierre Boulez in memoriam), the space opens up and the polyphony becomes denser as it goes along: a piano of delirium as envisaged by Boulez in his Sonatas, which calls for the virtuosity and vivacity of the figures. A dramaturgy emerges in 2 (Edgard Varèse in memoriam) integrating a percussion on the wood of the instrument: insistence of polar notes and star-shaped figures. The piano is expansive and the gesture free, the trills always present and the low register very much in demand. A bird can be heard, in superimposition, in Ballade N°3 (Olivier Messiaen in memoriam) within a writing with coloured chords and fluid arabesques almost Liszt-like. In 4 (Gérard Grisey in memoriam), the writing invests the resonant basses before reaching the high notes. The outpouring is permanent and the spatial configurations always redrawn: a piano of delirium, certainly, but always controlled.
The other four pieces reveal the Basque side of the composer through the rhythms (Dos Zortzikos) and luminous colours of his country. The register is clear and the melodic dimension emerges in Jaia (Faire la fête), a sort of sonic anamorphosis of Navarra, a piece left unfinished by Albeniz. The music of the Catalan can be heard in Mundaka (a town on the coast of Bizkaia) as well as the free rhythm of Messiaen leading a writing that is as complex as it is luminous. The signature of the composer of ' Vingts Regards' (the 'gong' in the piano's bass and the superimposed temporal layers) is also apparent in Dos Zortzikos, even if the writing of the twin pieces (2 is played before 1) is based on the singular rhythm of Basque folklore. Kaila Kantuz is a personal and poetic tribute to his native land by the Basque composer and pianist.
Alfonso Gómez is familiar with the sound universe and writing of Gabriel Erkoreka, which he fully inhabits, with the virtuoso scope and quasi-orchestral dimension of his keyboard. The sound is sumptuous and the commitment total in these six scores full of energy where the pianist combines power of gesture and precision of articulation.
Michèle Tosi
Gabriel Erkoreka (born 1969): Nubes, Cúmulos... Nimbos; Nubes II Cirros... Estratos; Four Ballades; Jaia; Dos Zortzikos; Kaila Kantuz; Mundaka. Piano, Alfonso Gómez. CD Kairos
