Pedro Chemes premieres his symphonic poem Malvinas with the National Symphony at the CCK

(By Pedro Fernández M.) The National Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Federico Sardella, and the Argentine National Music Choir premiere next Wednesday the 5th at the National Auditorium of the Kirchner Cultural Center (CCK) the symphonic choral poem by the Argentine composer Pedro Chemes, a musical reflection that intertwines sounds of contemporary and popular music and that intends to be part of the cultural-historical construction of the war that marked Argentina’s recent destiny with fire.

The work of Chemes, which started in popular music decades ago with El Cuarteto de la Ochava that visited the Tango de la Guardia Vieja and that in 2022 published its sacred mass of the 21st century “El pan compartido”, is structured in three movements: The departure, the sinking of Belgrano, and Vidala’s return, through a symphonic poem, “the freest form of academic music.”

“I had wanted to write a Malvinas work for many years, partly because I saw that the music that I pass through did not have any kind of participation in the memories and collective reflections that take place year after year regarding what that war was. “, says Chemes in a chat with Télam in a first approach to this musical work that will premiere with a concert with free admission at the CCK.

“To have an idea, on the occasion of Malvinas it was usual for the National Symphony to play Berlioz’s “Requiem”, it seemed to me that there was a gap there with respect to ourselves and that is why the intention of creating this symphonic poem appeared to me in which I’ve been working for the last two years,” he remarks.

Télam: You are a 63-year-old person, part of the Malvinas generation, what was it like to delve into this composition?

Pedro Chemes: It was very mobilizing because I remembered many things that were happening at that time and that had to do with the political situation in the country, such as the CGT march to Plaza de Mayo on March 30, 1982, it was a moment very complex in which it was also very difficult to understand where to stop, because the theme of colonialism and also the theme of the dictatorship appeared. I am closely linked to the Malvinas and during the war there was the question of one who was here and the combatants who were there, then that painful, traumatic flight, the pain of seeing the ex-combatants begging on the trains, the way they were released hand, all of that was very painful.

T: Without a doubt, it is one of the great signifiers of recent Argentine history.

PC: We live different moments regarding Malvinas, there has been a whole reflection in recent years, the subject was not hidden and it could be discussed, although Malvinas is something unresolved, a hole; So I wanted to leave a testimony from the place where I make music and something interesting happened because I have been working in popular and academic music for many years and here naturally, without forcing myself, different things came out, to evoke the ex-combatants. del Litoral I made a chamamé and at the same time crossed it with structures of contemporary music, and I was able to dialogue well between these two musical worlds.

T: How was the compositional work?

PC: The symphonic poem within academic music is like a freer way of being able to express oneself and in this case I used a technique that I had already used in the mass (“The shared bread”), which are groups of height, which are organized in different ways, that have nothing to do with tonal music but at the same time does not force you to something as strict as twelve-tone music, then you can, like a painter, assemble your color palette. Along with this I resorted to a chamamé, a vidala, a tango that refers more to the affective.

T: The poem is divided into three parts.

PC: The first movement is more abstract and uses the spoken word; in the second I put like a tanguito of the old lady who waits for her kid, always mixed with these elements that allow the affective thing to appear but also the abstraction and all the situation of uncertainty that the collapse of the Belgrano generated, which for me is like a metaphor for the homeland because it is a ship that is adrift bombed by a foreign power; the third movement is the vidala of the return, which evokes all that sad return although with an open ending, there appear a vidala and a box at a time when the chorus takes center stage, with a poem by Oscar Conde. There was like the writing of three situations: what is a departure, a tragic outcome and a return with an open ending, both popular music and contemporary music are very rich in recounting these issues, I think few people described certain moments in history like (Bela) Bartok.

T: Is this crossing of languages ​​a common movement?

PC: I think that Argentine music has always been in dialogue with the musical era, from the 1960s to here it disconnected from certain more universal movements and I think it went backwards. For me, Argentine music has to go towards other horizons because rhythmically it is very rich and the rhythm factor is a very preponderant factor, as much as it can be a series or a scale, the rhythms that we have and have developed are very rich, and can give , with other elements, interesting things, that is the place where I go.

T: Did you use artistic reflections from the literary or the theater about Malvinas to put together this composition?

PC: I based myself on memories, on everything that took off after coming into contact with the Malvinas again, because if you think about it, it’s almost the story of one. As a boy I had to live a certain political process linked to the 70s but my adult political process begins a bit with the Malvinas, that was strong, the Malvinas is an issue that has not been resolved and we carry it with us, it leads us to collective memories that are so important like the most personal.