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“It is Hard to Slow Down” (2024)
Concerto for Cello and Orchestra
Tiago Ribeiro started writing the music before thinking of a concept or a title, which is a slightly different process from any other of his works. Ribeiro’s pieces are very descriptive - he uses sound as a way of making character of people that are close to him. One would say, for instance, that everybody could picture elements like the Fountains, Pines and Festivals of Rome the same way as Respighi would describe them in his trilogy. Less so with Ribeiro’s pieces, which offer a completely personal view of the people and the type of relation he has to them, making it sort of a counter-program style.
Adding to this, “It’s Hard To Slow Down” is also somewhat biographical, specially due to it being the very last piece Ribeiro will be writing in London. He describes the title as the reflex of life in London, of the thematic material and the way he created the piece. “Slowing down is indeed a very difficult artform. Art is difficult, but slowing down at this stage of life is somewhat harder”, he says.
With this he doesn’t mean he will necessarily slow down in life, specially because “it will continue to accelerate as we meet more people and learn more - and we’re only in our early twenties, it’s not the time to slow down yet”. But in a comparison between life in London and in Portugal, being in the English capital can be much more complicated in an emotional, financial, energetic and physical way. Everything gets harder to manage when it’s not our natural habitat. That said, moving to London was the right choice to test his own limits, and to learn to survive in the speed of the city, and to learn to accelerate even more.
The Concerto is about what he learned as well, not only in terms of school, but more importantly on his own social function (which brought this piece to life) with the process of meeting new people in England.
Some years ago he had a period of wonder about where to take his music stylistically and was presented with aesthetics that he didn’t find appealing. It wasn’t until he discovered “Horses of instruction” by British composer Steve Martland that he re-opened his compositional mind into a path he was happy to follow. He has a rhythmic vivacity that is especially attractive for Ribeiro. Martland is one of the stylistic references for Ribeiro, as well as Steve Reich and Richard Baker.
“the key to this concerto is the cello. But the mishap has been writing for one percussion instrument only. I wanted to have a bigger span of percussion instruments but I want the player to be fully focused on the marimba part, which is very important, so I had to compromise. […] The concerto has in almost its entirety, a connection to Vasco, myself, to the friendship between us, the things we have in common (or the ones we don’t), the perception I have on him. And this interconnectivity reflects on the instrumentation too, and in this case, the marimba, which is Vasco’s second instrument”.
Hidden within the piece, there are also quotes of music by MacBriare Samuel Lanyon DeMarco.
Among the vast number of things that makes this an unusual concerto, there’s one that comes to mind (and sight) more easily – the use of an effects pedalboard. Ribeiro still doesn’t consider this to be a concerto for cello and electronics, perhaps “concerto for amplified cello” would be a better term. Back to the concept of slowing down, in the middle of the piece there is a counter dynamic between the solo cello and the orchestra, in which the latter try to pull the cello back in speed, but the cello doesn’t do so, always wanting to cruise with its ostinatos and melodies – but at some point the cello runs out of patience and gives up on trying that the orchestra stays with it (at this stage, the marimba is the only instrument that keeps up with the cello). This is when the pedalboard is turned on. It is only an extension of the solo instrument, which at that point claims is capable of making sound mass similiar to that of the orchestra by itself only, with strength and vigour. But after all, the orchestra comes to the conclusion that if the cello is not slowing down, it is the best option to join the cello again, developing a big tutti that puts an end to “It’s Hard to Slow Down”.
This piece was recorded on April 30th at Milton Court Concert Hall, conducted by Jack Sheen