Color Studies

Turkish composer Hakki Cengiz Eren presents a selection of chamber and solo works on his debut album COLOR STUDIES, released on Ravello Records. Eren’s music epitomizes expressionism in contemporary music, utilizing an enormous range of sounds, forms and textures to create highly evocative and dramatic musical statements.

Music for Strings, No. 1, for string quartet, features two basic ideas: 1) multi-layered, serpentine counterpoint defined by the abundance of grace notes and 2) short outbursts of even, typically homophonic rhythms. Powerfully, the opposition and evolution of these two ideas yields completely new material.

Six Studies on Archipenko, inspired by Alexander Archipenko’s painting ‘‘La Coquette,’’ focuses on evocative textures and alluring instrumental and ensemble timbres. The work features a spate of colors from single instruments and instrumental combinations that evoke visuals congruent to those of the painting.

Four Pieces for Solo Viola uses a myriad of techniques to imply active, multi-layered textures with a single instrument. Eren implements fragments from the overtone series, dramatic contrasts in timbre, generation of harmonic beats through small intervals and extremes of range.

Buffavento, for large chamber ensemble, recalls the deeply abstract and dissonant micropolyphony of Gyorgy Ligeti’s orchestral works Lontano and Atmospheres. The title, meaning “battered by the wind” describes the composer’s impression of the castles that occupy the mountain range of Northern Cyprus.