Located in the UK
Located in the USA
Located in Europe
- Eivind Buene
Landscape with Ruins (2006)
- Edition Wilhelm Hansen Copenhagen (World)
Programme Note
This piece may be played in three different versions. As Piano Trio, as Piano Quintet or with an ensemble of nine players. The following text refers to the version for Piano Trio.
Landscape with Ruins is a piano trio where the traditional relationship between the two strings and the piano is altered: The strings are treated as one entity, always operating together. The piano, on the other hand, follows a different trajectory. After the initial outburst, the pianist creates an open harmonic landscape where the two stringplayers fold out a series of fragments, moments of rapid gesture and sustained notes. These string-fragments are gradually eroded and condensed through the course of the piece, while the piano part is gradually expanding from singular notes, via chords of increasing density, to flowing streams of sound towards the end. When the piano has reached this point, the strings becomes the landscape, the same harmonic field that originally was heard in the piano. And with this change of perspective, the piece ends.
Landscape with Ruins is part of a cycle of chamber pieces called Possible Cities / Essential Landscapes. The Piano Trio belongs to the second half of the cycle, which deals with ideas of deconstruction and decay. The title is borrowed from the Italian writer Italo Calvino. His novel Invisible Cities is a poetic meditation on construction and decay, on human inginuity and the inevitable forces of nature.
"Contemplating these essential landscapes, Kublai reflected on the invisible order that sustain cities, on the rules that decreed how they rise, take shape and prosper, adapting themselves to the seasons, and then how they sadden and fall into ruins. At times he thought he was on the verge of discovering a coherent, harmonious system underlying the infinite deformities and discords..."
(Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities)
- Eivind Buene
Landscape with Ruins is a piano trio where the traditional relationship between the two strings and the piano is altered: The strings are treated as one entity, always operating together. The piano, on the other hand, follows a different trajectory. After the initial outburst, the pianist creates an open harmonic landscape where the two stringplayers fold out a series of fragments, moments of rapid gesture and sustained notes. These string-fragments are gradually eroded and condensed through the course of the piece, while the piano part is gradually expanding from singular notes, via chords of increasing density, to flowing streams of sound towards the end. When the piano has reached this point, the strings becomes the landscape, the same harmonic field that originally was heard in the piano. And with this change of perspective, the piece ends.
Landscape with Ruins is part of a cycle of chamber pieces called Possible Cities / Essential Landscapes. The Piano Trio belongs to the second half of the cycle, which deals with ideas of deconstruction and decay. The title is borrowed from the Italian writer Italo Calvino. His novel Invisible Cities is a poetic meditation on construction and decay, on human inginuity and the inevitable forces of nature.
"Contemplating these essential landscapes, Kublai reflected on the invisible order that sustain cities, on the rules that decreed how they rise, take shape and prosper, adapting themselves to the seasons, and then how they sadden and fall into ruins. At times he thought he was on the verge of discovering a coherent, harmonious system underlying the infinite deformities and discords..."
(Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities)
- Eivind Buene