Hemispheric Concerto. Carlos Pellicer Anderes

V-971-2024

Hemispheric Concerto is a work for tuba solo and concert band, dedicated and commissioned by the prestigious international tubista Ricardo Carvalhoso, soloist of the Münchner Philharmoniker (Munich Philharmonic Orchestra). The conception of the word ‘hemisphere’ and how the individual parts come together to form a larger and more perfect whole, has been one of the main axes when composing this committed work for the band. Undoubtedly, today we can apply this concept to a multitude of elements, approaches and geographical, scienti?c and even musical reasoning. But surely the most concise and perhaps most perfect example of this concept is that which science applies to each of the structures that make up the human brain. The two halves, or hemispheres that make it up, have an inverse character and are asymmetrical. Among other capacities, the left hemisphere controls the functions of speech, the ability to write, makes it possible to understand numbering and allows us to understand mathematics and logic: causal reasoning. The hemisphere on the right side, on the other hand, is characterized by being the center of nonverbal viso-spatial abilities, more linked to feelings, sensations and in general to perception. Despite the obvious separation of both hemispheres, they also have characteristics that allow continuous communication with each other, and in this way they share skills such as the recognition of words, objects and, above all, the formation of memory and its recovery. Each perceives reality in its own way, but neither is more important than the other. To be able to perform a task we need both hemispheres, pretending the balance.

Hemispheric Concerto aims to re?ect all this structuring through the fundamental concepts of causal reasoning, memory recovery, perception and balance in general. All this musically related from the main melodic elements that are born fundamentally in the second movement of the work (Lost memory) and that are shared equally in the ?rst and third (Allegro Causal and Allegro Perceptual), resembling the functioning of the brain human.

It is important to highlight the importance of the second one in particular ‘Lost memory’. Surely we all know or have suffered with someone close to us the terrible drama that can become memory loss, or even heartbreaking Alzheimer's disease. It is precisely in that part shared between both hemispheres of the human brain where these problems with memory begin. In the same way, in Hemispheric Concerto this is the shared part between the ?rst and third movement of the work, and where all the excitement and drama of these terrible diseases is spilled. The rest of the work is constructed on the basis of a strong language on many occasions, trying to re?ect that so perfect and so "balanced" complexity of the human brain through musical discourse.