Works

Giacinto Scelsi
Hispania (1939)
Trittico
for Piano

Length: 18:00
Editor: Salabert

Giacinto Scelsi was without doubt a great pianist, but even more a brilliant improviser.
His works are faithful transcriptions of his improvisations either on the keyboard or at the piano, almost invariably performed by his assistants. All this has been a contiual ground for endless disputes in Italy, even arriving at doubts on the paternity of the compositions. Today, finally, the polemics seem to have died down and there is a unanimous agreement on the pianistic genius of Scelsi.
The triptych Hispania is one of a series of extremely interesting and not very well known compositions written in 1939 (which include also Suite 5 and Suite 6 as well as Sonate 2 and 3).
Giacinto Scelsi never visited Spain, despite the fact that his mother was Spanish, but like other composers (Schubert's descriptions of the sea which in fact he had never seen come to mind) Scelsi succeeds in evoking different aspects of Spanish life with totally original effects, from the religious processions to the tragedy of the past civil war. A skill in describing Spain that is equal to the earlier imaginative portraits of Debussy and Ravel, anticipating morever through the use of chromatic and rhythmic clusters the future poetics of Iannis Xenakis.