Program notes:
We find four small pieces for two violas written during composition studies at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in the German city of Düsseldorf, with the composer José María Sánchez Verdú.
Each piece is inspired by a haiku of the most important Japanese poets. The Haiku is a very short poem, it has only three phrases that contain a strong expressive charge. Under this premise, the initial approach was to create pieces of short duration, with few materials and with a great expressive load, as a memory after the contemplative reading of each haiku.
Haiku I:
It is inspired by a haiku by Matsuo Bashö (1666-1694), one of the most important poets of the Edo period of Japan. Bashö cultivated and consolidated haiku with a simple style and with a spiritual component. His poetry achieved international renown and in Japan many of his poems are reproduced in traditional monuments and places.
In this piece we highlight the subtle play of timbre produced by the changes of position of the bows between the two instruments, as well as the use of very fast and harmonic tremolos.