Emmanuel Nunes
Quodlibet

THE REVIEW

Forget about this CD. If you happen to listen to "Quodlibet" by Emmanuel Nunes, make sure it's during a live performance rather than with a player. You will then be faced with:

  - an orchestra (with two conductors) joined by
  - seven soloists;
  - six percussionists operating at ten locations spread out in space,
  - and an ensemble of 21 mobile instrumentalists who disperse in the hall as prescribed in the score. 

A great spectacle, even just to watch. This music is designed for the space in which it is performed, and for the experience of the space that the listener makes of it. The premiere was held at the Coliseu dos Recreios in Lisbon, where Nunes went as a boy to see gymnastic or circus performances, to listen to classical music but also zarzuela.

The percussionists (on xylophone, marimba, woodblocks, vibraphone, and crotales, among others) punctuate the 56 minutes of this piece with their imaginative sounds. The orchestra faces off in a crackling duel of sounds. The musicians come and go as if we were at the market. Some are hidden: you hear them but do not see them. The audience: alone and fearful in the middle of this infernal turmoil.

Here is "Quodlibet" (1990-91): a listening experience that is anything but easy yet all-encompassing, requiring the complete surrender of the listener. No doubts, no regrets, just submitting to the sound. To the sounds.

The piece is divided into 12 parts, but you won't notice because there are no pauses between them. It results from materials coming from 14 previous works by the Portuguese composer (born in 1941), reworked and detached from their original context; the result is neither a collage nor derived from a sterile desire to quote: it's not the reason the piece was born, and it’s impossible to establish connections with the sources when listening.

But already from the title, "Quodlibet" is inspired by the ancient musical form that integrates different and disparate sound materials according to the composer’s taste (quod libet, whatever you like). Between a live listening and the idea you can get from the CD, I definitely recommend the former, having experienced both.

What do you say?, you wouldn't want to miss out (in) this hurricane of sounds...