"Cuatro canciones sobre los ángeles" - composition by Javier Hombría

Premiere of Javier Hombría's composition "Cuatro canciones sobre los ángeles" (recorded live)
Performed by Pilar Sánchez, Raquel Llera and Javier Hombría

0:00 I. El ángel mentiroso
3:22 II. Madrigal sin remedio
5:58 III. El alba denominadora
10:43 IV. Los ángeles muertos

"Cuatro canciones sobre los ángeles" (Four songs concerning the angels) is a set of songs by Javier Hombría, written between 2022 and 2024. These use as text a selection of poems from Rafael Alberti's "Sobre los ángeles", which use many surrealist and symbolist techniques, creating very evocative and dreamlike images. The unifying thread of this collection is the “angels”, which are depicted by Alberti: “not like the christian ones, corporeal angels you can see in beautiful pictures or prints, but as irresistible forces of the spirit, mouldable to the murkiest and most secret states of my nature [...] blind reincarnations of all the bloody, the desolate, the agonising, the terrible and sometimes the good that was in me and what surrounded me". The music uses a large amount of formal, harmonic and symbolist tools to reflect the dark and twisted moods and images expressed in the poems, creating atmospheres of despair, suffering and beauty as a fleeting sensation or outright lie.
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Sopranos: Pilar Sánchez (1 and 3), Raquel Llera (2 and 4)
Piano: Javier Hombría
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Video: Donostia Musica
Audio: my dad with a cheap Tascam :)
Mix and master: Iñaki Fernández Manteca @celeiro.prod
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Recorded live in the Town Hall of San Sebastián, Burgos, 22/5/2024