Pasquale Punzo

Instrumentation details: spatialized* violin

*spatialization patch realized in collaboration with Anacleto Vitolo at AV-K Studio (2022)

Special mention at the Karol Szymanowski International Composers Competition

Commission: Francesco D’Orazio

Dedication: Francesco D’Orazio

Première: 10 october 2023, Auditorium M. Cesa, Conservatory of Avellino – Italy

Score published by SZ Sugar

Program notes: The ancient Greeks had a clear concept: of all intervals, the octave is the only one to produce such a perfect consonance as to make the two sounds that make up the interval almost indistinguishable. Thus, an effect of euphonic harmony arises from the octave. The Greeks called this sound relation precisely diapason, literally “which crosses all [the strings]”. From this simple principle, by crossing and exploring the entire keyboard of the instrument, using various ways of attack and articulation four of the strings, we search for that euphonic inharmony that intends to reveal other sonic and expressive possibilities of the instrument.

Instrumentation details: euphonium and electronics*

*electronics edited by Anacleto Vitolo and Pasquale Punzo at AV-K studio (2023)

Dedication: Marina Boselli

Première: 24 september 2023, Auditorium E. Morricone – Rome – Teatro studio Borgna – Scena multiforme concert

Score published by Stradivarius musical edition (Milan)

Program notes: It is the first piece of a project that will include a cycle of compositions for solo instrument (brass) and electronics. This first piece, written for Euphonium, aims to
create an engaging musical experience that combines the sounds and characteristics of the Euphonium, explored in its less usual register, changed and observed through a different light, thanks to the possibilities offered by electronics. To achieve this result, the electronics themselves combine a live use
with that of pre-made tracks that characterize the entire sound environment.

Instrumentation details: double bass and electronics*

*electronics edited by Anacleto Vitolo and Pasquale Punzo at AV-K studio (2024)

Dedication: Marco Cuciniello

Première: 15 November 2024 – Ligatura Festival (I edition) – “Suoni ed echi” concert, Salerno – Italy

Score published by SZ Sugar

Program notes: Archetypal psychology, inaugurated by James Hillman around 1970, is linked to the theory of archetypes and the collective unconscious.
The aim is to recover the value of the image and the imagination, since terms such as shadow and light, death and life, which arise on the same plane and are therefore characterized as two sides of the same reality, have become one something that is below and the other something that is above, ultimately they have become antagonistic terms.
By placing the axis of the world in a vertical position, we not only divide two aspects of the same image, but we also separate them and, in the end, we completely reject one of the two.
This rejection, or removal, makes it difficult for us to recover the original image. To find the center, we must first recover the opposites.
the individual, yesterday as today, has often buried the shadow that nourishes him and gives him strength to the point of losing contact with it, he has lost his own soul which is what is underneath, the underworld, the house of Hades. Since then, to find the soul, an initiatory journey is necessary that leads under the earth, beyond the Great Threshold, in dreams, in the night, in the darkness, to have the dimension of light and of oneself.

Instrumentation details: flute, cello and piano

Première: 25 May 2021, Teatro Studio Borgna, Auditorium Parco della Musica – Rome – Italy

Score published by TEM – Taukay musical edition

Program notes: From a dry impulse, increasingly more defined lines gradually emerge on the surface, which expand the plot by uniting the initial recursive verticalities. They are first renewed in a suspended and distant dimension and then gradually reborn, changed in timbre and dynamics as a brief recovery that leads to the finale, characterized by a fibrillating dialogue between the instruments of the trio.

Instrumentation details: violin, viola and cello

Première: 13 November 2021 – Monastero delle trentatré, Naples – Italy

Piece performed as part of the Natural Stories project, in collaboration with the Association “Monastero delle trentatré” with the support of the MIC and the Campania Region (law 6/2007)

Score published by TEM – Taukay musical edition

Program notes: The term petràia (sf – variant of stony ground, of more literal use) generically refers to an accumulation of stones due to the disintegration of the sides of a mountain or formed by mechanical-chemical alteration of the rocky soil and, with an even more restricted meaning, aquifer of debris on the side of a mountain, or, finally, a river or sea of stones. From a rapid and energetic attack, characterized by a change in timbre that, suddenly, almost brutally, from defined, completely saturating it deforms, until it becomes rough, rocky, disintegrated, triggers a descending pitch that leads to sections in which the material tries to find a new shape and definition following its path, until it reaches a state of maximum smoothness, just like pebbles in a water bed.

Instrumentation details: string quartet

Commission: Academy Diotima quartet

Première: 14 February 2025 – Arsenal-Jean-Marie-Rausch – Cité musicale-Metz 
Académie Diotima edition 2025 – Concert de restitution

Score published by SZ Sugar

Program notes: the idea behind this piece is contained in its title “Segni di passaggio” which describes the traces left by the bow, made of an continuous, changeable and unstable sound which explores the many possibility in the entire useful surface between the strings, the bridge and beyond the bridge of each instrument in the string quartet.

Instrumentation details: violin, cello and piano*

*with light preparation

Commission: Eidos Trio

Dedication: Eidos Trio

Première: 28 February 2025 – Rovereto Festival – Philharmonic hall, Rovereto – Italy

Score published by SZ Sugar

Program notes: Taking care of the overall sound of the various textures, always different and often characterized by the overlap of multiple articulations and types of transition (ordinary position > above the bridge > beyond the bridge): always continuous and changing.

Instrumentation details: flute (also alto flute, clarinet (also bass clarinet), violin, cello and electronics*

*electronics edited by Anacleto Vitolo and Pasquale Punzo at AV-K studio (2024)

Commission: ArteScienza Festival edition 2024 “Atlantide Attesa”

Dedication: Marco Momi and Opificio Sonoro Ensemble

Première: 06 July 2024, ArteScienza Festival “Atlantide Attesa”, Goethe Institute – Rome – Italy

Score published by SZ Sugar

Program notes: The era of advanced technologies (internet of things, humanoid robotics, smart cities, metaverse, etc.) has already arrived and we can define it as “Elsewhere”.
Elsewhere is a place that is incessantly invented, constructed and reconfigured by narratives and social imaginaries. The ways in which we imagine it are therefore not the fruit of our individual imagination, but derive from stories collectively constructed and reproduced by a multiplicity of actors and through a variety of communication tools and practices. These shape our perception of otherness, the way we relate to it, the policies that regulate coexistence on Earth.
Imagining building bridges where there are distances offers opportunities where the exact science of facts provides us with useful elements, but without a purpose that can be called human, full of meaning, salvific. “These are hours – those of perception augmented by fantasy, by reading, by fever – in which everything becomes possible, good as well as bad”: even today the new scenarios of the imagination expanded in the augmented reality of communication technologies as well as the scenarios of preferences and tastes dependent on consumerist aesthetics constitute a present in which everything will be possible, for better or for worse. Aesthetic philosophy (perception, representation, art) keeps the imagination alive by obtaining people not to be dominated by reality but is it able to play a central humanistic role even in the era of advanced technologies?

Instrumentation details: clarinet (also bass clarinet), piano and electronics*

*electronics edited by Anacleto Vitolo and Pasquale Punzo at AV-K studio (2025)

Commission: Ensemble Sibyllae

Dedication: Elvira Streva

Première: 30 April 2025 – Neue Musik Nacht, Hfmdk – Frankfurt auf main

Score published by SZ Sugar

Program notes: “Untamed Waters” explores the tension between the organic expression of acoustic instruments and the unpredictable element of electronic manipulations, creating an ever-changing soundscape.
The composition intertwines the lyrical flow of piano and clarinet with electronic textures that evoke the uncontrolled and turbulent energy of wild waters.

Instrumentation details: 2 violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos,

Première: 14 April 2021, Auditorium Comunale of S. Vito al Tagliamento (PN) – Italy

Score published by TEM – Taukay musical edition

Instrumentation details: 3.3.3.3 – 3.3.3.1 – perc. I, II, III – harp – strings

Winning piece of the Komponist Werkstatt 2023 in Saarbrücken – Germany

Première: 20 May 2023, Deustche Radio Philarmonie, Saärbrucken – Germany

Manuel Nawri, conductor

Score published by SZ Sugar

Program notes: The term Teleri derives from the Venetian telèr, a form corresponding to the Italian word telaio. This name was given to the large pictorial compositions on canvas which, between the end of the 15th century. and the 16th century, constituted the most widespread mural decoration in Venice, especially for representing vast historical-narrative cycles with stories of various kinds, including many relating to stories of saints and miracles. This work for orchestra was born from this simple idea, built on four main “frame” sections (Come limiti o confini, Denso come cera fusa, Largo, Come bagliori lontani). Frames that have in themselves a further evolutionary development and that at the same time want to return sound images that alternate, change, merge, through a principle of recurrence and precisely of transformation, which above all has the intention of wanting to stimulate the memory of the ‘listener who, while recognizing the “scenes” during the narrative path, will always find them new and with the most varied meanings.

Instrumentation details: vibraphone* and string orchestra (or string quintet)

*with light preparation

Work written for the review “Vorrei essere uno scrittore di musica”, in memory of Pier Paolo Pasolini

Dedication: Dario Savron

Première: 10 November 2022, Antico Teatro Sociale G.G. Arrigoni – S. Vito al Tagliamento (PN) – Italy

Score published by Stradivarius musical edition (Milan)

Program notes: “The first memories of life are visual memories. Life, in memory, becomes a silent film. We all have an image in our mind, which is the first, or among the first, of our life. That image is a sign and, to be precise, a linguistic sign. So if it is a linguistic sign, it communicates or expresses something”.
These are the words that begin a 1975 interview with Pier Paolo Pasolini, a character who with his life, his writings and his points of view, just like a linguistic or temporal recursion, returns, current, in this time that celebrates the centenary of his birth. The work you will listen to therefore focuses on an idea, a sign, an initial gesture – just like the one Pasolini talks about in the interview – that recurs within the piece and that, through the creative and interpretative path, renews itself, but without changing its linguistic sign and, the memory of itself that symbolize, precisely, the “resti”.