Composer Georg Friedrich Hasse gives testimony at the first session of his residency at the CNDM

The interpretation of “In Vain” involves the National Youth Orchestra of Spain, which analyzed and studied the work with the composer and some members of Klangforum Wien, the group responsible for the premiere five years ago, under the direction of Sylvain Camberling, to whom it was dedicated. The meeting, held on Thursday the 13th at the Magalia Castle Palace, was followed by the Madrid performance on Friday, which is repeated on Sunday the 16th at the Teatro Lopez de Ayala as part of the current Badajoz Music Series. Twenty-four players, including several members of Klangforum Wien who occupied the first stands, under the direction of Jordi Francis, gave meaning to the work which, in the face of the commercial hyperinflation of urban music, recognized in the value of tangibility and character.

Haas’s music walks a fine line. On the one hand, there is the effect, the sound reality that demarcates a space of high artistic and inevitably intellectual virtuosity, in keeping with other historical initiatives such as Machott’s aim when treating the rational structure of the isometric motet that gained so much admiration among the novitiate of the fourteenth century. Haas is known for the spectral music that dominates the world of harmonics as well as the subtle overtones that fill the empty spaces between notes that define the traditional musical scale. At the ceremony held on Friday, Mario Muñoz Carrasco He explains this by referring to several metaphors: the metaphor of walking safely along the promenade as determined by the moderate scale and the sense of fragility resulting from entering a sea subject to the indeterminacy of waves is illustrative enough.

But there remains the other side of the line, which is dominated by faith, the conviction of the existence of a sound reality that has the power to intervene in the listener, to question him and to convince him of the possibility of a shared consciousness. Thinking about Hasse’s opera and its clear exploration of issues that meticulous modern man tries to avoid, such as pain, blood and death, we talked about something specific. “aesthetic voyeurism”, Which, in a positive sense, indicates the truthfulness of the plot on which the word “in vain” is also based. In the same presentation at Friday’s gala, Haas himself recalled the cause of action. These days, several articles have spread that explain personal discomfort with… His family’s Nazi backgroundthe peculiarities of his sexual behavior as an almost unconscious response to a corrupt inheritance, and, most pressingly, the political change in Austria with the rise of far-right populism to power in 1999. Jörg Haidercausing a condition that unfortunately remains latent and more widespread.

The phrase “in vain” refers to the resignation implicit in the title and in its spelling, in lower case letters, almost to announce the ellipse that frequently appears in the name of other works by Haas. The sliding and falling direction that the work announces musically, the choral consistency of its episodes, the emergence of a magnificent vocal mural, the intervening clashes, the frankness of its silence, the painful and turbulent course of the general process and the interpretive protocol, organized in the manner of a great ritual, are facts that embody the idea. The version heard on Friday presented a definitively eloquent vocal composition, exquisitely directed by director Jordi Francis, clearer every day and more convincing at every step of his career. It had more warmth than the Klangforum Wien recording with Cambreling, was somewhat less precise in some attacks, and was clearly at risk of performing live and without the editing capabilities of an album.

Code, as you might guess, is an essential part of “tinkering.” Hence the concert of which their performance is a part, is configured in parallel with the lighting staircase that leads from the brightness that illuminates the stage to two periods of strict darkness in which the performers test out their parts. Although after what was seen in the National Auditorium, it may be necessary to speak more appropriately of darkness due to the clarity created by emergency lights being permanently on. However, the ultimate effect of the celebration remains, a feeling of impossibility that penetrates the skin for little over an hour, regardless of even the knowledge one has of the circumstances surrounding the composition. Because “in vain” it is Solid and definitive musicwhich was made possible thanks to the work of interpreters willing to honor it in all its details. From here, other compositional lines arrive that also interested Haas and whose traces will remain in many of the concerts of the CNDM season: essential quotations for the author’s necessary deployment.