CYBORG (2010)
for Orchestra
Episode I of the Cyborg Tetralogy for symphonic orchestra
Comissioned by the Staatskapelle Weimar
Dedicated to my father
Presentation
Full performance
Full length Live
Work description
Playing time: 24:00
Opus/Year: (2010)
Genre: Orchestral music
Instrumentation: 3,2,3,3 - 6,3,4,1 - Pk, 4 Perc - Strings (14,12,10,8,6)
Premiere performance: 02.05.2010 / Weimar / D / Weimarhalle / Staatskapelle Weimar / Christoph Poppen (Cond.)
First perfomance(s): 07.11.2013 / Detroit / USA / Orchestra Hall / Detroit Symphony Orchestra / Leonard Slatkin (Cond.)
Score material available at Sikorski Music Publishers
Reviews
Leonard Slatkin reviews the piece and the new musical technique Cyber Singing:
“Cyborg” is a first composition by Ferran Cruixent, a Spanish composer, to be heard in the United States. He’s a relatively young guy. What he’s done, is write a piece where he wants to show how emerging technologies can be conjoined with what is a very traditional organization – the symphony orchestra. There are many, many unusual sounds that happen in this piece. The players are asked to speak. They are asked to sing. They are asked to play their instruments in unusual ways. But where the ‘cyborg’ implication comes from, meaning some form of creature that is part human; part machine, is that each orchestra member must download an MP3 file that the composer has created, and near the end of the piece, they all press their phones and it’s played back on the stage as we continue to play other things. So, he’s introducing a communications device into the orchestra, showing this way that technology combines with what we do. He calls it Cyber Singing. It’s fascinating. The real thing that makes this amazing, is that he’s not coming over for the performance, but he’ll be watching it on the Internet from Spain. And to think about that – that the composer has the chance to hear his work played for the first time in the United States by using the very technology he’s writing about. That’s extraordinary.
(Leonard Slatkin, conductor)
Review (german):
"Am Anfang aber stand 'Cyborg' von Ferran Cruixent, das Auftragswerk der Staatskapelle Weimar, ein mit scharfen Konturen und ebenso scharfer Licht- und Schattenwirkung ausgestattetes Hörgemälde, das sich mit der enger werdenden Beziehung Mensch-Technik auseinandersetzt. Im Wogen der Kontraste des mit modernsten Mitteln flüssig hingebreiteten, von Poppen mit unbändiger Energie organisierten Werkes spielt sich der Kampf der Kontrahenten ab, der sich letztendlich zu Gunsten des Menschen entscheidet. Plakativ erheben Musiker und Musikerinnen die Stimme zu hymnischem Gesang, eine neue 'Ode an die Freude', die hier das Primat des Menschen einwirbt. Lange anhaltender, herzlicher Beifall!"
Hans-Jürgen Thiers / 03.05.10 / TLZ
Other reviews:
Classical Source
Detroit Free Press