Ardesia (2026)

Program notes:

The piece originates from Velázquez’s Saint Thomas, not to depict it, but to translate into sound the tension that runs through the figure: a still body, a suspended gesture, a gaze trying to focus on what is visible and what remains in shadow. The interest lies not in the scene itself, but in the mental condition of someone searching for a truth that has not yet been reached. This idea of a threshold becomes musical material. The piano writing alternates between subtle resonances, isolated registers, and denser zones where the high number of notes and their speed paradoxically create a sense of immobility. It is a “mobility within immobility”: an internal movement that does not progress, like a thought circling without yet finding an answer. The structure unfolds through timbral layers that emerge and recede, like fragments of an image briefly illuminated. The transitions do not aim to resolve but to keep a space of uncertainty open, where what appears remains unstable. The piece does not represent Saint Thomas; instead, it works on what the painting suggests, the relationship between visible and invisible, between density and stillness, between the desire to touch and the moment just before contact.

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