The Duo Messieri/Selva approach their repertoire in a salutary non-philological way. Frequently, strict adherence to period performance practice is asphyxiating, and accurate information about each one's merits merely guarantees financial reward. Such a mean, austere approach would entail absolutely literal performances, especially with recent or contemporary works that do not need updating or enlivening. Instead, Messieri and Selva do what they want with the works: what the works want. An undeniable professional rigour conforms to the spirit, not to the letter. Scelsi's original score Maknongan does not envisage live electronics, but the drone overlaid on the present recording makes the text's virtual contents audible and meaningful, without sounding redundant. Even if the trills and clef flutters of Bussotti’s birds are more reminiscent of flying than singing, they are human, atonal birds of the twentieth century; yet electronic echoes and delays put them into a cage. The original post-minimal mechanism of Festa's Toccata is, on the contrary, set free in a broad texture, open to the perception of a man immersed in his environment.
On this record, the complete collection of Scelsi's saxophone pieces (Maknongan being for ad libitum instrument) is interspersed with works by younger composers, who sound in comparison almost more Scelsian than Scelsi himself. The monotonous ascetic, Scelsi, is thus for once closer to the highly whimsical Bussotti. Scelsi's influence on Dazzi is most marked in Le fond de l’eau est parsemé d’étoiles: the intensity of expression (Nonian) is effused in a perpetual present. But the foremost importance of sound, the extreme scantiness of the material and the suspension of time make up a koiné that transcends all boundaries between schools and trends. On to the material of sound Messieri grafts a soft, dreamy melos, so calm that it turns back into timbre: the Fantasie, in relation to reality, is also attained through such merging of categories. Similarly, Lauricella's Ilynx blends saxophone and electronics in a vortex, creating a single instrument: digital sound is transformed into breath, pulsation, and a vibration that is almost alive and animal.
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