Dédalus / Invención / Núcleos / Concreción

For half a century Juan Carlos Paz, unlike any other, has had an aesthetical impact on the avant-garde in Argentina and Latin America as a composer and concert organizer, musicologist and educator, author and film actor: There is hardly a Latin-American composer today who has not been influenced by Paz. This immense influence is based not only on his varied work, ranging from twelve-tone technique via metrical experiments and jazz influences to physical compositions and free concepts, but also on the extensive contacts between the highly cultivated composer and artists, painters and writers of his day.

As a highlight of his decades of commitment to Latin American contemporary music, the Ensemble Aventure dedicates this portrait CD to the Argentinian composer and artist Juan Carlos Paz. This CD contains the recordings of four exemplary works, among them two that had never before been recorded.

"Dédalus, 1950" marks a culminating and turning point in Juan Carlos Paz’s composing – his adopting and further developing the twelve-tone technique for years takes on a new quality in this work. Paz follows Anton Webern’s serial technique.

"Invención" was commissioned by the University of Tucumán (Argentina) and was written in less than six weeks. The row the piece is based on, consists of four groups of three notes, and has been organised so that the second half is the inversion of the first. Using contrapuntal techniques, variations and ostinatos, Paz created more and more new figures pursuing each other and musical gestures.

"Nucléos" is the composer's last solo composition.This highly virtuoso piano piece is a significant example of the manifold influences and interests converging in Paz’s personal style, as well as of the synthesis and reconciliation of opposing compositional worlds.

In "Concreción", Paz uses a whole cosmos of music composition elements and graphic figures – the embodiment of the music that characterizes Paz's late works and anticipates developments of the late-20th and 21st centuries.

The interpretations of "Invención" and "Concreción" through the Ensemble Aventure are the first European performances and the first recordings worldwide.

A co-production with Deutschlandradio.
With the kind support of the Fundación Música AntiquaNova.