Silence
for String quartet (2019)
This piece was specially written for the competition which reward was participation as a residential composer at the festival of Aix en Provance.
The idea of the quartet was to connect specific motives and extended techniques with possibilities of the human voice; the first part of the quartet is ‘’presentation’’ of those techniques, second is imitating them with voice by playing, and in the last part the players are producing sounds just by voice, completely abandoning their instruments. Its free-written style gives musicians freedom to choose how to interpret particular parts and, what is more important, how to imitate its own instrument by voice. If music can be the silence, why can’t it be noise and random shouting? Quotes used in the quartet are from John Cage and Daniil Kharms.
Yellow – Red – Blue
for Clarinet, Basson and piano OR
for Soprano, any wind instrument and Piano (2019)
The idea of the piece is to try to interpret the invented story of someone searching for a painting. All the elements (the graphic) are made from elements of painting Yellow-Red-Blue by Wassily Kandinsky. Whilst practicing and playing the piece, the idea is that players get used to graphics/elements of the painting. Finally, they reach the main part which is looking at Kandinski’s painting, and improvise on the elements they are spotting at that particular moment. The idea is to make the piece playable by any combination of 3 instruments
Petrov and Kamarov
for Soprano, Bass, Flute, Double Bass and Piano (2019)
The piece was written in 2019 for a student’s concert at Music Biennale Zagreb. In the composition are used texts from Daniil Kharms and Alexander Pushkin. Plot: soprano wants to sing Pushkin, bass wants to catch mosquitoes. They are both illusions, random thoughts whilst players are tuning on some random concert. The score also contains instructions for staging.
Nocturno
for Soprano, Bass, Flute, Clarinet, Viola, Double Bass, Piano and Dancer (2019)
The was piece written very quickly as a result of friendship with the ensemble which played Petrov and Kamarov and as an idea to extend experimenting with using a dancer instead of a conductor as in Imaginary object. The completely aleatoric piece is partly created by movements of the dancer (in recorded version: actress) whose movements do not only affect the pitches of instruments as in Imaginary object but also in one part she chooses spontaneously who will play in which moment. Used text is David Bowie’s song Let’s Dance translated into Italian. Check out the audio-video recording
Imaginary object
for Flute, Clarinet, Piano, Vibraphone, Bass Drum, Violin and Violoncello (2019)
The piece was written for the reading session during the Masterclass at Music Biennale Zagreb 2019. It is an interactive piece where the conductor is changed for a dancer. But a dancer not only dictates the ‘time’ but also her movements results in which pitches the players are playing. The score contains a detailed explanation of performance.
Mirrors
for Flute, Clarinet, Piano, Violin and Violoncello
Coming soon
Some other Chamber pieces
- Meditation? for Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Violoncello and Piano (2018)
- Wenn ich deine augen seh’ for Flute, Clarinet, Bassoon and Accordion (2018)
- L’etat normal for Flute, Clarinet, English horn, Piano, Guitar, Violin and Violoncello (2016)
- Hasards Noirs des Voyages for Soprano/Mezzosoprano and String quartet (2015)
Helena Skljarov 