BELFIATO QUINTET

Just before the release of their new album, we met with the members of the Belfiato Quintet to talk about their relationship with the music of Karel Husa. We wanted to know what it is about his compositions that fascinates them and how the project arose that combines wind quintet with piano and orchestra. The album now being released presents three striking compositions: Serenade, Recollections, and Five Poems. It also offers listeners a musical world full of colours, emotions, and freedom.

What is it about Karel Husa’s that appeals to you the most, and why have you decided to devote yourselves to his music in particular?

We think Karel Husa is among the composers who are neglected in this country. Paradoxically, in America, where he spent most of his composing career, he was one of the most famous composers of his day. His music can be characterised as formally clear and contrapuntally rigorous, with fine sensitivity to instrumental and orchestral colour. The musical language is highly emotionally charged and is built upon a carefully crafted modern aesthetic, which he does not employ for its own sake, but always in support of a deeper message. In other words, the rare quality of Husa’s is its natural combination of the intellectual, analytical aspects of music with the emotional.

What approach have you taken in interpreting compositions that are so strongly inspired by recollections, freedom, or nature, such as the Five Poems or the Recollections?

The music of Karel Husa is noteworthy for the diversity of its musical language. All of the pieces clearly exhibit the composer’s characteristic style, but each composition differs fundamentally and is constructed on a different basis. Five Poems, one of his most important chamber works, is a cycle of short musical poems that are not exactly programmatic, but are always given a title synonymous with some sort of activity or characteristic of birds. The composition gives the quintet an interesting musical language based not only on melodic and harmonic progressions, but also on a brilliantly expanded sonic palette of colours, where the individual players and the whole ensemble have to seek out an inexhaustible quantity of aural evocations of birdlife. The composition dates from late in Karel Husa’s life, and it is based on expressive messages, in which he employs a wide variety of sonic experiments such as micro-intervals, aleatoric passages, flutter-tonguing, or trills based on changing the colour of a single tone, and he makes appropriate use of all of the quintet’s instruments for imitating birdsong. The composition is a musical metaphor for freedom, nature, and energy.

He wrote Recollections about 12 years earlier, but they are certainly more progressively modernistic. I would go so far as to say that it is something of an experiment with new currents and ways of notating music. The whole work can be seen as musically surrealistic, reflective, often with lyrically nostalgic moods, a meditative character, and unusual colourfulness confronted with intensely dramatic passages. The form here is notably freer than in the Poems, but the composer’s approach is all the more modern. The music contains polyphony, many dissonances, extended techniques (of course) like micro-intervals, glissandos, flutter-tonguing, multiphonics, aleatory etc., as well as layered motifs that often evoke the elements of surrealism mentioned above. The hardest part of interpreting the work is just getting through it at the beginning, to get an overview, and to get to know what your colleagues are playing.

What new sonic possibilities or challenges came with collaborating with the Prague Philharmonia and with the pianist Matouš Zukal?

The Prague Philharmonia and its chief conductor Emmanuel Villaume were certainly the best possible choice. The orchestra feels itself to be at home in these chamber works, and it plays accompaniments with extraordinary sensitivity while being able to produce convincing interpretations. Emmanuel Villaume is able to give the music fluidity and drive and to play with colours, all in natural accordance with Husa’s score. We were tremendously pleased that the Prague Philharmonia chose to programme Husa’s Serenade on the opening concert of its 31st season. It was a joy for our ensemble to rehearse and perform as part of a Prague Philharmonia subscription series.

As far as Matouš Zukal is concerned, he is certainly one of the rising stars of the young generation of pianists, as is shown by his recent success at the Île-de-France International Piano Competition, where he became the first Czech winner in the event’s history. Among other things, he is also a laureate of the Prague Spring Competition. It was of special benefit to us that Matouš is a big enthusiast and supporter of music of the 20th century and of contemporary music. Recollections is the most demanding composition on the whole album; the score is very complicated. Given the difficulty of his piano part, Matouš’s ability to attune himself to the complicated instrumental parts of the quintet and to navigate between them was remarkable. We were all inspiring each other throughout the entire rehearsal process and the actual recording of the composition.

A new season is beginning. What is there of interest awaiting the Belfiato Quintet?

Already in the first half of September, we are giving a recital in Ostrava’s town hall. A few days later, we will appear with a similar programme at the Dvořák Prague International Music Festival. We will play Rejcha’s beautiful and seldom heard Wind Quintet in E minor, and Françaix’s First Wind Quintet will be a virtuosic delight. For the first time in some years, we are also programming Opus Number Zoo by Luciano Berio, which involves not only music, but also acting and recitation. And in particular, we want to invite our listeners to our anniversary concert on 25 November at the Rudolfinum, where we will christen our new album and celebrate 20 years of playing together!