GEORGES LENTZ - composer / sound artist
 
 

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About 'Alkere' from 'Mysterium' ("Caeli enarrant..." VII) for prepared piano (2002-2013)     Alkere for prepared piano was initially written during a trip to the Australian Outback in November 2002. The complete isolation of the vast, flat landscape, the total silence and breathtakingly radiant night skies were among the strongest impressions I received during this trip - as was the humbling thought: how small and insignificant are we within this gigantic setting!   The following experience might sound somewhat ridiculous, but it felt real and important to me at the time: after a series of cloudless days, a large group of clouds appeared on the horizon one evening shortly before sunset and lit up the whole sky in blazing colours. In the midst of the seemingly God-forsaken landscape, this dramatic spectacle struck me almost with the force of a vision (very possibly, the radical loneliness of the place was beginning to play games with my mind). The same night, under the stars, I sketched the whole of Alkere (a word meaning 'sky' in the Indigenous Eastern Arrernte language of Central Australia).   With a little distance, it now seems to me this little piece might mark the beginning of a darker tone in my music. The light, carillon-like sounds of the beginning are broken up by an increasingly threatening atmosphere as the work progresses, reflecting my generally rather sombre outlook at the time. (Incidentally, some of the same darkness can be found in my subsequent piece, Monh for viola and orchestra, only to break out with full force in Ingwe for solo electric guitar).   I put the Alkere sketches away after that night and only completed the work in July 2004. It was premiered by the South-African pianist Frank Wibaut at the Salzburg Summer Academy in August of that year. I revised the piece in 2013.     G. L. 2014