´The Quest´

Piano Concerto Op. 90

by Horatiu Radulescu

For nearly three decades, the Romanian-born French composer Horatiu Radulescu, now based in Versailles, has been one of the most fascinating and original contributors to new European music. He was the founding figure in the Parisian ´spectral music´ movement, which extrapolated all kinds of new harmonic possibilities from the upper reaches of the overtone series, and he has always been its most radical and intransigent exponent.
He has long been a legendary figure within the avant-garde, but until recently performances of his works were comparatively rare, for two reasons.
One was the unorthodox and often extravagant forces required to perform his works - for example, the Byzantine Prayer for 40 flautists playing a total of 72 flutes. The second was the pronouncedly spiritual and mystical underlay of his music - something readily accepted in the 1990s, but virtually taboo among European modernists of the seventies and early eighties, for whom such inclinations were, seemingly, acceptable only as attributes of non-Western cultures (even Stockhausen was progressively ´marginalized´ for this reason).

Radulescu´s recent Piano Concerto (´The Quest´), which I first encountered in 1997 in the course of a visit to look at the composer´s scores and sketches, is a unique and remarkable work on many counts.
In terms of Radulescu´s earlier compositions, it is a work of summation, but also of a new reaching out.
Whereas many previous pieces detached themselves from tradition to find a world of their own, the Concerto  binds together many different traditions, using Radulescu´s typical ´spectral´ approach to harmony and melody as the unifying force which welds together fragments of a Bach chorale, Romanian carols, bells sonorities and many other elements. In doing so, the work clearly gains the capacity to reach a much broader concert audience than the composer´s more obviously avant-garde works, but with no loss of individuality and authenticity.

The time-scale of the concerto is ambitious, but not unheard-of: essentially, it is that of the two Brahms piano concertos, and like Brahms, Radulescu knows how to establish a sense of spaciousness from the outset. The solo piano part, though highly demanding, is not concerned with virtuoso display. Rather, it has a shamanistic role - focusing, concentrating and guiding the energies of the whole ensemble. The orchestral writing is full of astonishing, often magical sonorities and textures, but these are never ends in themselves: they arise naturally from the musical material.

It seems to me that Radulescu´s Concerto  is very much a work for the end of the 20th century - modern yet also reaching back into the distant past, highly personal yet drawing together elements of many cultures and beliefs. Both solemn and joyous, it is a rare example of a contemporary work that manages to be affirmative in an entirely original way, without resort to familiar stereotypes. Undoubtedly, it is an outstanding achievement.

Richard Toop

Reader and C
Reader and Chair of Musicology
Sydney Conservatorium of Music
Sydney University
Australia
1.1.1999