Cayambis

Three-movement solo piece for unaccompanied oboe and optional reciter

Poetic Melodies is the result of a commission by American oboist William Wilegus, to whom the work is dedicated. It is loosely inspired by four poems by José María Eguren, a Peruvian poet, journalist, painter and photographer of the 20th century. The work is also a study in the use of octatonic scales, with only one particular scale employed in each movement.

The source of inspiration is not to be taken as a sign that the work is programmatic in nature. While some specific passages—mainly in the first movement—might be interpreted as a sort of figuralism, it is the character (i.e. the mood) and the structure of the text which have been subjectively transferred to the music.

Duration: c.a. 7 min 30 sec

Four-movement duet for clarinet and viola

As a child, I read and loved Nathaniel Hawthorne's story about the myth of Pandora's Box and it has been in my mind as a possible subject for a musical composition since 2002, when I wrote my orchestral piece Icarus. When Dr. Katrin Meidell and Dr. Elizabeth Crawford commissioned me to write a piece for their duet "Violet", the idea of choosing Pandora's Box as a source of inspiration for the work was among the first I had. After all, the story has two characters—Pandora and Epimetheus—and the viola is indeed a box, capable of producing all sorts of sounds – some pretty spooky, by the way.

Each movement has a title and its relation to the movement's character is rather obvious but there is no internal story, no plot to be associated with the structure, the motifs or the themes. Why a title then? Well, simply because I love telling stories, just like Hawthorne.

Duration: c.a. 11 min

Three-movement duet for flute and guitar with optional projection

Il giardino della casa was commissioned by Peruvian flute player Daniel Cueto and Romanian guitarist Mircea Gogoncea. It is divided in three movements, each of them inspired by photographs taken by my father at our home garden. The first movement, “Fiori, sogno impressionista” is based on pictures of flowers; it is followed by “Fogliame, gungla in miniatura”, inspired by photographs of leaves and bushes. Finally, “Uccelli, i piccoli visitatori”, based on pictures of small and colorful birds closes the set. The piece has been conceived to be performed with a projection of the photographs in the background. It was premiered on July 12, 2016 by Daniel Cueto and Mircea Gogoncea at the Auditorium of “Colegio Santa Úrsula”.

Duration: c.a. 9 min 30 sec

Nine-movement piece for double reed sextet (two oboes, English horn, two bassoons, contrabassoon)

This composition is a set of short pieces inspired by the paintings of Ernesto Bavastrello, my great-granduncle and a Peruvian painter who, simultaneously with his work as a pharmacist, dedicated his life to the study of different painting techniques, such as pastels and watercolors, which he applied to a copious artistic production carried out between the first decade of the twentieth century and his death in 1984. The first stage of his production was dominated by themes that were characteristic of both the coast and the highlands of Peru. Later on in his life, struggling with vision problems, his art became increasingly towards the abstract, capturing in vivid colors ghostly figures, suggestive images, floral chromatic whims and exotic fantasies.

While all the pieces have certainly been conceived with the idea of conveying some sense of the painting that served as their inspiration, none of them follows any given program or libretto.

Duration: c.a. 14 min

Single-movement work for concert band

This work is based on two traditional dances from the coast of Peru: the Marinera and the Festejo. The first is often danced by a single couple. The woman dances barefoot, with a white handkerchief in her right hand while holding her skirt with her left hand. The man is dressed with a typical "chalan" clothing, which includes a poncho and a hat; he also holds a handkerchief in his right hand and sometimes uses this same hand to take off his hat while dancing. The dance is an elegant and stylized reenactment of a courtship, and the dancers never touch each other. The Festejo is a dance of African origin, developed by the slaves brought by the Spanish from Congo, Angola and Mozambique. It is usually performed by several couples. The women wear handkerchiefs on their heads and colorful dresses. Choreographies may be very elaborated, with men and women dancing barefoot in a festive-erotic dance that includes strong movements of their hips and torsos.

Duration: c.a. 4 min 30 sec

Single-movement work for chamber orchestra

Fantastic Episodes is a work inspired by my childhood fantasies about space travel and my fascination with the TV show from the 60s “Lost in Space”. The title refers to the structure of the work, which is designed to be perceived as a sequence of parts or "episodes", each of them a short musical "fantasy", resembling in some way the structure of the TV show. The work is also a tribute to the music of Lost in Space, particularly the cues written by American composer John Williams, on which characteristics such as the instrumentation and musical style of Fantastic Episodes are based.

Duration: c.a. 13 min

Solo for unaccompanied flute

Argo Navis was a southern constellation that represented the Argo, the ship used by Jason and the Argonauts that is today fragmented into the constellations Carina (the keel), Puppis (the stern) and Vela (the sail). The three-movement work was dedicated to the Peruvian flutist Daniel Cueto on the occasion of his departure for Germany to pursue musical studies. The graphical representation of the three constellations (according to their position in relation to Lima on the day of his departure), were transformed into the musical material that was used in the composition of the work.

Duration: c.a. 3 min

Twelve-movement piece for piano quintet

This work for strings and piano constitutes the majority of the music for the Peruvian film, “La Prueba.” This movie tells the story of a young girl searching for her father, whose blood is the only kind that can save the life of her brother. After a long quest in a region of the country overwhelmed because of drought, she must face a test whose result even she was unable to anticipate. Part of the music of this four-movement work is based on the Gregorian chant, Rorate Caeli Desuper (Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above) which is combined with motifs that describe the melancholy character of the person, who in her path will discover that rain does much more than satisfy one’s thirst.

Duration: c.a. 12 min

Five-movement solo piece for unaccompanied clarinet

Five Good Fellows was written in April 2005 for the Spanish clarinetist Joan Père Gil, who premiered the work in the Ateneu Barcelonès in June of that same year. Its five movements were inspired by the characters in J. R. R. Tolkien’s novel, The Lord of the Rings. Approximately nine minutes in duration, the third movement, “Abracadabra,” uses multiphonics and foot stomps to enhance the descriptive nature of the composition.

Duration: c.a. 9 min

String quartet (four movements)

The composition of the Grotesque Quartet began in August 2002, a month before the staging of a stage adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray, for which I had written incidental music. For this reason, I could not prevent the quartet from having some influence from that work. This explains, in part, the origin of the title as well as the titles of the four movements: Tenebrous, Ludicrous, Mysterious and Anxious. At the same time, the compositional period of the quartet also coincides with my discovery of the music of Bernard Herrmann, whose work in films such as Psycho and Vertigo caught my attention and undoubtedly influenced the sonority and general concept of the quartet as well.

The music uses a scale made up of three groups of two semitones separated by minor thirds—which, if started on C would give: C, C sharp, D, F, F sharp, G, A sharp and B—intervals that contribute to giving the work a somber and tense character.

Duration: c.a. 13 min 30 sec

Eleven-movement piece for soprano and chamber orchestra

In 2002, the Peruvian amateur theater company "Apéndice" made an adaptation of Wilde's work, written and produced by Rafael Figari and José Luis Gargurevich. The pieces included in this score were performed live in each performance under the direction of the composer and synchronized with the action on stage.

Available online since 2007 under the title "The Picture of Dorian Gray", the recording of the music has been listened to more than 80,000 times and has exceeded 3,000 downloads. Parts of it have also been used in the soundtrack of some film projects such as "The Headache House" by Marc Boehlhoff. These two facts alone show the ability of this simple but effective music to captivate audiences and perhaps explains why I have always been drawn to it and why I long for 2002, when, with a group of friends, crammed into the small pit of a theater, we made the audience jump out of their seats and get goose bumps.

Duration: c.a.1 hr 6 min

Four-movement wind octet for two flutes, two oboes (2nd doubles English horn), two clarinets and two bassoons

Composed in 2001 for my second Composition Workshop at the National Conservatory of Music. The inspiration came from two sources: the first one was a small section of the music I composed for a theatrical adaptation of Robert Graves' I, Claudius, in 2000. I always liked a few bars of the music of that play and thought I could write a whole new piece with it. Thus, it became the raw material for the harmonic and melodic development of The Garden of the Shadows.

The second source was H.G. Wells’ science fiction novel The Time Machine. In fact, the title of the work, as well as the titles of the four movements, make reference to the plot of this science fiction novel, in which a scientist from the XIX century travels to the future, only to find out the human race has evolved into two separate species: the beautiful, peaceful and almost childish Eloy and their counterpart, the Morlocks, grotesque creatures of the night who live underground and fear light.

Duration: c.a. 9 min