Symphonic music

Wayang Purwa means “shadow theatre”: Wayang Purwa is the shadow-theatre tradition of Java and Indonesia.

The concerto for oboe and orchestra, like all Brizzi’s works — from Iayxie to Serenata — attempts to rise upon emptiness, in an extreme stripping down of the sonic event; the self participates in being-there as other, a pure and anonymous process that comes into being only in the hinc et nunc. In this reduction of the “qualities” of sound, in this apparent impoverishment — or detachment — sound regains its accidental dimension, its factum brutum.

Renzo Cresti, 1981

Morgana is a composition for symphonic orchestra in three parts, as indicated by its subtitle: Three studies on the illusory for an imaginary ballet.

The sense of the illusory is produced by an incessant rhythmic repetition which, through timbre, becomes polyrhythmic perception. The first part was written in 1986, the second and third in 1988–89.

Nosce te Ipsum is a composition for large orchestra in microintervals, written exclusively for instruments capable of continuous sound.

The harmonic components are inextricably linked to the melodic ones. They seek a contrapuntal rigour alien to any kind of ornamentation.

The perceptual result aims to be an optimal point of balance between stillness and the continuous movement of sound, understood as a profound spiritual secretion substantiated by consciousness.

Afrodite is the orchestral transcription, with some liberties, of L’épreuve du labyrinthe, the piece for viola and prerecorded violas on tape.

Here, the timbral differentiation of the various voices allows the perception of polyrhythms and polymetres. The pulse creates a “swing” between our contemporary language and microtonal melodies with the flavour of an imaginary East.

We thus find ourselves in a labyrinth of signs crossed by echoes that incessantly refer to different musical cultures.