Dialog for Solo Cello

Art, like life itself, is a constant dialogue between past and present. In my writing I find myself confronting the past: a present tone or musical idea cannot be understood without remembrance. Any attempt to revive the past is by nature incomplete — something is always lost, missing or misplaced. Yet, especially in music, an attempt to create something wholly new while ignoring its heritage would result in emptiness, missing the essential range of feelings and associations; such music resembles a human being with no memories. As a composer, by capturing past occurrences and importing them back into the present moment, I can “manipulate” the audience.

The piece was written especially for the cellist Gavriel Lipkind, at his request. It combines playing with “live electronics” — a Boss delay-loop pedal, operated by the cellist during the performance. In the “first” part the player records himself playing. In the fast “second” part (symbolically, there is no pause between the parts), regular use of the delay pedal at a fixed frequency and length builds harmonies by stacking previously heard layers upon one another, until the texture is almost completely blurred and the metre destabilises, followed by a gradual fading. Finally, at the press of a single button, the player triggers the recording made at the very beginning and holds a “dialogue” with it, playing the closing part of the piece, built partly on motifs from the opening. Technology here gives performer and listener the possibility of recall — re-hearing and re-thinking; gradually the memory “improves” and can hold longer stretches of music, future becomes present, and the present merges with its past.

A further, quite different aspect of this dialogue lies in making the cello be played and sound like an oud (an old Middle-Eastern plucked instrument, ancestor of the Western lute). Working in Israel, I was exposed to this unique instrument and its rich tradition. The oud, an older relative of the string family than the modern cello, sets up another demanding dialogue between two proud instruments and their different times and places, reflecting on our musical heritage in the widest sense. The piece has been performed many times in Germany and across Europe, and once in Israel — at the launch of Lipkind's disc at the Jerusalem Music Centre.

Commissioned by Gavriel Lipkind (written at his specific request).

Premiere: Gavriel Lipkind.

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