Tracks del álbum Can you hear the flowers, ejecutados por Elmira Darvarova y Fernando Otero

 

Compositions by Fernando Otero

SEVEN PIECES FOR SOLO VIOLIN performed by Elmira Darvarova, on violin

CAN YOU HEAR THE FLOWERS - for solo piano, performed by Fernando Otero.

Published by Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp (BMI) & X-Tango Music (BMI)

Review - Can You Hear The Flowers - Los Angeles, 2021. Fernando Otero’s new album “CAN YOU HEAR THE FLOWERS” is a revelation and a new affirmation of this fabulous artist not just as the major pianist that he is, but also as an important contemporary composer emerging as the Bartok of our time. Together with virtuoso violinist Elmira Darvarova, he presents an impressive album that is breathtaking from the first to the last note. Already the poetic title of the album turns heads and ushers you into a transcendental sonic experience by evoking the many senses through which flowers are usually perceived, now also with an intriguing expectation to hear what they could “sound" like. From the very start, the first piece in this album - Bergenia - brings a Bartokian mood with the melancholic sadness of a quasi-folk song displaying jagged syncopations and exotically flavored intervals. The guitar-like pizzicatos of the violin are indescribably expressive in their sorrowfulness, if not despair. The piece is perfectly shaped and poised to leave you with the strong desire to immediately hear it again and stay immersed a bit longer in its desolate atmosphere. The next piece - Lantana - brings the contrasting relaxed mood of a languorous romantic conversation, in which a flower - or is it a flute? - calls out to its mate, evoking, in response, the rustling of leaves - or is it the wind? The flute-like harmonics alternate with wind-like tremolos for a very original dialogue, which the violin interrupts with the striking turns and leaps of its bewitching melody imposing the magic of a far-away mirage, not unlike Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade character. Next is Nerine - a dramatic galloping chase, which has been waiting impatiently in the wings, longing to be unleashed and to be followed, stopping briefly to let you catch your breath, only to draw you again into a whirlwind. The electrifying virtuosity of the violinist channels the vigor and imaginative passion of iconic solo violin compositions such as Eugene Ysaÿe’s “Ballade” (a masterpiece dedicated to the genius composer-instrumentalist of Eastern Europe — George Enescu). The chase could be a frantic escape attempt, but it could also be just a heated argument between unseen entities. The violin is involved in a bitter-sweet monologue that could also be a dialogue, or is it a duel between competing emotions? Nerine leaves you behind, and it slips away. Next comes the surreal repose of Kalmia - a piece that explores a desert-like landscape with minimalistic sparse gestures, mostly in continuous harmonic intervals. A plaintive lament searches for different perspectives, singing its melody anew, each time on a different string of the violin as if climbing up to look for yet a higher plane, from which to grasp for a resolution of its quest. The song evolves into a bird’s call, or is it just an otherworldly whistling of a tune that cannot be described, it can be only sensed. A long downward glissando in the violin spreads its shadow as if to take away the hope that the answer would cease to be elusive. The reprise brings back the initial plaintive statements, and just when it seems as if all hope is lost, the final harmonic interval manages to locate an exit or is it just a distant ray of light that beckons at the end of the tunnel… What follows is Dahlia - a piece that shows the violin reincarnating itself through harmonics/flageolets as a flute, alternating this new identity with its old self, echoing and reflecting on this duality in a prelude to a brief dancing episode, followed by the main melody appearing in several consecutive disguises — through shimmering tremolos, and dazzling major sevenths. The violin’s duality dissolves and explodes into a multi-dimensionality, revealing that the dance competition had been maybe a sword fight, the clang of metal palpably evident. But not for long, as the impression of a rather graceful dance returns and obliterates any trace of fierceness. Will the violin accept this invitation to the dance floor, now that the swords have been retracted? The violin demurs, pretending now and again that it likes itself better as a flute, and the violinist’s stunningly centered intonation, in both roles here, as a violin and as a flute, shows each note and each leap of the major seventh melodic interval in its incomparable beauty as something to not just behold, but to experience as sharply as a pain, caused by a flower’s thorn. (The major seventh, common in jazz, is among the most dissonant intervals, and is a relative rarity in classical music, although major sevenths have been occasionally featured by some prominent composers, such as Bach, Verdi, and Webern; the frequent use of major sevenths in Otero’s album “Can you hear the flowers” is a striking device, that distinctly colors the music). After Dahlia we hear Celosia, a darkly seductive piece, starting with a hushed, but an impossibly beguiling melody, posing, through its dreamy veil, an extremely spellbinding question. The answer comes non-hushed, in bright, articulate harmonic intervals, a seemingly assured and defined, yet hesitating, answer, attempting to evade, or transform, until it reaches an amazing point of repeating and restating, several times, the same major sixth interval, shaping and re-shaping it through Elmira Darvarova’s infinitesimally nuanced dynamics and phrasing, which reflects that same interval differently each time. The procession of the harmonic intervals continues to unfold, formulating an answer that it strives to present as the only right one, yet it eventually fails to convince itself, and a nostalgic, almost bitter mood emerges, hinting of irony and resignation to some inevitable obstacle to the pre-ordained harmony of the intervals. This deeply moving trance-like melancholy is suddenly pierced by the imposing cadenza-like high-pitched aria of an extroverted diva, followed by a dissonant, clown-like mocking as if reflected in a distorted mirror. To reconcile this, the sobering procession of intervals interjects itself again, but it is rebuked by the diva and her sensational coloratura. The reprise brings back the initial hushed lyricism, still asking that loaded question, remaining still unanswered, as the procession of the bright, non-hushed intervals just fades away, without providing a real closure to the anguish, without fulfilling the faint promise of acceptance. And then comes Ixia - a dramatic, almost frantic, tarantella-like dance, worthy of Paganini in its difficult string crossings and multi-voiced contrapuntal structure. Darvarova’s dazzling technique and incomparable tone quality bring out to perfection the rhapsodic episodes and the relentless perpetual motion, the jagged chords, complex intervals, accented syncopations, and a blizzard of virtuosity. Interspersed with a few brief peaceful episodes, the euphoria continues unabashed, until all competing voices mesh together in the amalgam of a blinding climax. Ixia leaves you dazed, before the stormy grand finale of this astonishing album - the solo piano piece “Can You Hear The Flowers”, which emerges like an awakened giant, comes out to examine, to reflect and juxtapose, to doubt and affirm at the same time, while overwhelming you with an avalanche of exceptionally brilliant and masterful playing. Reflecting on all that the violin had already expounded on during the previous seven pieces, Fernando Otero reiterates the veracity of his harmonic and melodic language, displaying the dissonant major seventh intervals and chords as jewels in the crown of his subliminal concept for this album. Scherzo episodes intersect with extended arpeggios and Prokofiev-Esque passages. A waltz emerges and unfolds, dripping so much with bitterness, sadness, and sarcasm, as to be the very antipode of Chopin’s waltzes. And again the tension of dissonant intervals and scales returns, once again establishing the parameters of a zone that delineates the inventiveness of Otero’s compositional language. The bitter waltz is back but transformed into that one scale that merges harmony and melody, perhaps holding the key to hearing the flowers’ elusive voices. The mayhem of the Coda is overpowering, leaving us entranced, but not before Fernando Otero puts one single last note as the definite end, the period to his statement, leaving nothing else to be said.

1

BERGENIA

2

LANTANA

3

NERINE

4

KALMIA

5

DAHLIA

6

CELOSIA

7

IXIA

8

Can you hear the flowers