Richibi’s Weblog

“Poèmes barbares“ (1896)

Paul Gauguin

_______

if you thought that Arno Babajanian was
done with synesthetic investigations,
seeing sounds, hearing colours, here’s
his “Six Pictures for Piano“, which he
plays, all of them, himself

can a piano paint, take pictures

you tell me

something else interesting is happening
here, the six are individual pieces despite
being part of a common whole, as the title
suggests

this is the opposite of trying to integrate
movements to a continuous and unfolding
conception, something Beethoven, for
instance, pursued, indeed ardently, in his
own sublime music

dissociation seems a context, a XXth-,
a XXlst-Century, context, in our presently
more polarized world, according to, of
course, Babajanian

what might hold us together then

maybe music

incidentally, the movements to the
“Six Pictures“ here are

1 – Improvisation
2 – Folk Song
3 – Toccatine (a little toccata)
4 – Intermezzo
5 – Choral
6 – Sasoun Dance (don’t ask),

should you not be able to read Russian

note, none of these themes are
photographic

don’t either miss Babajanian‘s
“Sonata for Violin and Piano“
as played by, here again,
himself, it’s rapturous

Richard

psst: see Gauguin above paint poems