Benet Casablancas: Shade and Darkness: Salonorchester

Shade and Darkness, lasting some 12:30 minutes, was co-commissioned by the Centro Nacional de Difusión Musical and the Festival Internacional de Música y Danza de Granada. The work is inspired by Turner's famous painting of the same name, subtitled "The Night Before the Flood", although this does not imply any programmatic or even less descriptive intention, beyond the composer's admiration for the painter, and for the richness of tones and chiaroscuro, subtlety in the treatment of pictorial matter, and the dynamism and emotional force present in his work, to whose depth John Ruskin alludes: "Nuance is in Turner, first of all, a beautiful aid to the great impression to be conveyed, but it is neither the source nor the essence of that impression; it is little more than a visible melody... preparing the feelings for the reading of the mysteries of God." The score, generous in expressive contrasts, explores the ductility and richness of possibilities of the strings, with a very diversified use of textures, densities and colours. The formal arrangement describes a wide ternary arc, consisting of two slow and often static sections - not without ominous foreboding - and a more lively central part, punctuated by occasional turbulence and dazzling flashes of timbre, culminating in a powerful climactic process. In the final bars the four voices of the classical quartet fleetingly emerge, as a tribute to Günter Pichler, founder and member of the Alban Berg Quartet, to whom the score is dedicated, and who conducted the premiere of the work in front of the Joven Orquesta Nacional de España on 24 and 25 June 2014 at the Auditorio Nacional de Música in Madrid and in the Patio de los Mármoles del Hospital Real in Granada.