SPECTRUM XXI- 2008- International Festival of Spectral Music November 21, 2008

HYPERION Ensemble
Conducted by Iancu DUMITRESCU and Ana-Maria AVRAM
Tim Hodgkinson: “Vers Kongsu” ( uk premièere)
Iancu Dumitrescu : Nucléons Chaotiques ( world première)
Costin Cazaban: Hosanna ( world première)
Petru Teodorescu: Metempsychosis III ( world première)
Ana-Maria Avram:”Voices of the desert” (III) ( UK premiere)
Iancu Dumitrescu: Temps Condensés V ( world première)

Three new concerts in England, after a decade from the UK debute of Iancu Dumitrescu Ana-Maria Avram, and their virtuoso ensemble HYPERION, leading figures in the Eastern European school of modern classical music.
The Hyperion Ensemble
The Hyperion Ensemble was founded in 1976 by the composer Iancu Dumitrescu. As a starting point, Hyperion explored possible connections between the most archaic Romanian music - Byzantine music, folk music collected by Bartok, etc. - and today's avant-garde music. It is a tradition of performance, of interpreting each new score as a provocation of the spirit, and a quest for new domains of sound. Aesthetically, at the heart of this work is the notion of spectrality as it developed in the work of Dumitrescu, Avram and other Romanian composers - that is: a specifically transformational spectrality, as opposed to the structural spectrality of the French Itinéraire group.
Hyperion has performed all over Europe –and recently in United States, and recorded numerous LPs and 24 compact discs.( Mode Records- New York)
* "The extraordinary and uncategoriseable Dumitrescu / Avram team. Pursuing the intimate grain of sound through the directed inspiration of performers who somehow produce music while uncovering it, escape control by going through it. Movement and stillness. (…)"
Chris CUTLER ReRMegacorp - London



 * "Iancu DUMITRESCU and Ana-Maria AVRAM. They have become leading figures in contemporary classical music, developing a musical language that sweeps boldly from very small scale insect-like sounds to vast noise laden soundscapes. In recent times they have attracted a lot of attention from musicians outside of the classical field, as the music is relevant to the post-ambient, post noise, post classical aesthetic which is the sound of the moment. FORCED EXPOSURE - Boston
".. Dumitrescu's acousmatic compositions are restless, detailed forays into the aesthetic of noise, dramatically penetrating the very fabric of instruments and articulating entirely new sounds - by turns violent, reflective, impassioned and eerily disarming." London. Royal Festival Hall, New Aura Series, LMC-BBC 3
* ". Dumitrescu's music has a visceral, untidy force rare in classical music - the textures of Xenakis pared of the later's Beethovenian ambition, made more focused and linear. Works also features three compositions by Ana-Maria Avram, born in Bucharest in 1961. Wonderful to hear music where textural innovations aren't employed to color pre-existing structures, but evolve form in process.(...) Seems like these Romanians are engaged in a similar kind of sonic research to that which resulted on the masterpieces of Giacinto Scelsi and Ennio Morricone: collective endeavor, genuine "deep listening". The results are similarly overpowering, a million miles from the tooting inconsequence or most of what passes for New Music in the classical world." Ben WATSON - "The WIRE", London

 * "Although two of the most compelling and exciting living composers – Josh Ronsen-Austin,Texas, USA


 * "A thundering, urban edifice illuminated only by flying sparks and reverberating with the hollow boom of deflected metal. But even the most staggering constructions are put together brick by brick, or note by note, and Dumitrescu pays great attention to detail, releasing vast amounts of energy like a nuclear explosion from the tiniest components."
ALVINNE PRITCHARD, BBC Radio 3, London


* "The music of Iancu Dumitrescu explores the ultimate sense of sound guiding the listener through new spheres of sonic adventure, a kind of cryptical music..." Robert ZANK - Edition RZ - Berlin
* "Iancu Dumitrescu, Romanian composer (Sibiu, 1944), the most famous and audacious of the young school in his country, one of the undeniable heads of the current "avant-garde". He represents the "avant-garde" without compromise, the power of invention, the experimental audacity, a taste for intellectual speculation, an irresistible creative impetus, rare at this level. He is the dominant personality of today's music in his country..." Alfred HOFFMAN - Bucharest





 * "For a music that uncompromisingly addresses the future, opening us to an entirely new and unheard universe of sound, Iancu Dumitrescu's art is nonetheless grounded in tradition, and nourished on the fertile resources of the Romanian land. He exemplarily embodies a school, unique in the world, which has found in its own ancestral roots the means to go forwards in the spirit of the utmost adventure.." Harry HALBREICH, (Editions Salabert) - Paris



 * "...The music of Romania's leading composer Iancu Dumitrescu is spectral, electroacoustic, but above all it is a coherent totality grounded in a different conception. Of all living composers, Dumitrescu is the one who has most exploded sound. Dumitrescu's work is a negation, from the depths, of everything in contemporary music symptomatic of distraction, of banalisation, and of a radical loss of purpose. His music is not a new convolution in the knot of modern music, but an unraveling of the curse. (...)"
Tim HODGKINSON - RESONANCE - London

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