Christian-Lavernier_Six-Fois-Onze_Alessandro-Solbiati (2023)
Six Fois Onze
I have always considered the “compositive meeting” with a never employed instrument as an important incentive to enlarge my sound image and to open inside myself new expressive landscapes.
Over the years this happened with the accordion, the cimbalom, the “sounding stones” by the sculptor Pinuccio Sciola, and with other unusual instruments. As for soñada, it has been a double meeting: on one side an amazing instrument, at first glance a cross between a guitar and a tiorba, but which shows more and more a richness and beauty of sound, technical means, registers and dynamics absolutely original, not comparable with each other similar instrument ones, and from the other side a performer, Christian Lavernier, the only one owner of this instrument, true its own mentor, who is continuously open to put himself in the game with immense passion, skill and dedication, to answer to every composer’s request, thinking they are always possible, to “travel” with the same composer discovering new possibilities.
Across Christian, I’ve known a so large number of soñada’s resources, and I’ve obtained such a number of ideas by them that the only one way to give them life and sound without falling in a catalogue has been to imagine a series of short pieces, each of which with its own clear figural and imaginative appearance, every time based upon particular aspects of the instrument.
The first one starts from the true center of the register and enlarges it till we’re amazed by its range, the second one is around the proximity of the low tuning of sixth ad seventh string (re-mi) and then leans against the dark sound of the resonance strings, the third one is based on the “bordone” of open eleventh string, played with a bow, over which left hand sings an ascending melody; the fourth one consists in a series of very quick variations, the fifth uses a wide collection of extended techniques, obtaining unpredictable sonorities, the last one is concentrated on every kind of harmonics on the eleven strings.
I hope I could give a contribution to the knowledge and the repertory of an enormously interesting instrument, exploring at the same time with it new expressive fields of mine.
Alessandro Solbiati