Sunday 22 May 2022, 20:15
The Hague: Paleiskerk
Around Maxim Shalygin
Todos los fuegos el fuego
Amstel Quartet four saxophones
Keuris Quartet four saxophones
Maxim Shalygin conductor
Maxim Shalygin
Todos los fuegos el fuego
A masterpiece for eight saxophones
According to NRC, it was one of the best concerts of 2019. The premiere of Maxim Shalygin’s Todos los fuegos el fuego made a deep impression. Shalygin drew inspiration from the collection of short stories of the same name by Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, in which a parallel universe breaks through our everyday reality. It resulted in a full-length masterpiece for 8 saxophones in 8 movements, where each movement has its own character and sound world. You will be sitting on the edge of your seat.
Shalygin wrote Todos los fuegos el fuego for the Dutch top ensembles Amstel Quartet and Keuris Quartet. The composer loves the versatile, mystical sound of the saxophone, the instrument par excellence to translate Cortázar's literary world into music. The writer was an avid jazz lover.
The Ukrainian composer Maxim Shalygin, who lives in The Hague, has established himself as one of the most outstanding composers in the Netherlands. His work can be heard in the most prominent concert halls and festivals, from the Concertgebouw to November Music. Shalygin writes music with a strong emotional appeal and a spiritual character. He does not hesitate to go beyond the boundaries of reason. In doing so, he says, he finds truth and beauty, which can produce refined and serene notes, but also rebellious and even disturbing music.
Press Quotes
"A self-conducting Shalygin finished the job with flying colours, in an idiom in which the most diverse stylistic elements enter into a wonderful symbiosis ... Assisted by a phenomenally playing Keuris and Amstel Quartet, Shalygin moulded it all into a perfectly logical and determined discourse (NRC on Shalygin’s Todos los fuegos el fuego).”
“Adembenemend (De Volkskrant over Canto d’inizio e fine, gekozen als een van de beste cd’s van 2019).”
"Crushing. Breathtaking. It is not difficult to point out the most impressive concert in November Music. That was Maxim Shalygin’s fiery Todos los Fuegos el Fuego, written for eight saxophones. For more than an hour, they played with almost superhuman dedication and control... The music was intense, changing from subdued beauty to dry, rattling rhythms and savage, brutal harmonies. A gripping experience, the audience agreed (Brabants Dagblad).”
“Creativity is an unconscious act of insanity, in a burst of which the truth is born. No matter how beautiful or disgusting it may seem to people far from madness, its value is beyond doubt, both for the author and for those able to sense its invisible beauty. After all, gratitude for endless trials and suffering brings joy and blissful emptiness …”
Maxim Shalygin
