IMPERATIVE, Elena Leonova

Repertoire

Picture by Daniel Miguel

IMPERATIVE is a quite demanding work, in terms of techniques and performance. It is a powerful piece that works in concert very well. Add it in your repertoire list!

The Composer

ELENA LEONOVA (Irpień, Kiev region, Ukraine, 1971) is a composer, pianist and teacher based in Poland. In 1994, she graduated at from the Kiev State Conservatory named after P. Czajkowski, major – Piano (class of doc. Eleonora Tkach), major – Composition (class of prof. Yurii Ishchenko). She also studied with Besty Jolas (International courses “Acanthes”, France, 2002) and Marek Stachowski (Krakow Academy of Music, 2003).

As a composer, she is the author of chamber and symphonic music as well as theater, jazz and experimental music. She is a member of the Board of the Union of Composers of Ukraine, since 1996. She obtained a 1^st Prize at the International Marian ta Ivanny Kotz Competition at the “Kyiv Music Fest ‘95” and a special award for “Wesnovannya” for soprano and orchestra (Kiev, 1995).

Details of the work

Publisher: Aventino Music (ITA), coming soon.
Duration: Around 5:30
Range (written): A2 – D6
TECHNIQUES: Tonguing accuracy, diversity of articulations, slaps, flatter, click sounds, air sounds, altissimo register.
PERFORMANCE: To play with expressive energy. To improvise in different short sections of the piece.

Here’s the audio from my Soundcloud channel. Soon, you can listen to the new version I recently recorded in an album for the Italian label Aventino Music.

Joan Martí-Frasquier · IMPERATIVE! (2015-16) for Baritone Saxophone solo. Elena Leonova

Meaning and structure of Imperative

This piece was written for a high level of performance. The piece contains some room for improvisation and some modern performance techniques that give freedom to the performer. The work is a recitative. Considering the lower register of the baritone saxophone, I heard the rigorous, hard nature of the sound of the instrument. (Elena Leonova, 2016)

As said above, IMPERATIVE is a quite demanding piece. Technically, there are some fast and slur excerpts in wide intervals and octave changes that demand a good air column. There are several attacks and staccato excerpts in the low register you should play with precision and a solid beat. On the other hand, you should play delicately and with a beautiful sound and good intonation some fast excerpts in the altissimo.

Musically, IMPERATIVE is also varied. You have to play with lots of energy and rhythmic precision, sometimes. There are also very expressive moments, usually in soft dynamics, and other ones are declaimed, in an almost dramatic sense.

I specially like the three short moments open to improvise with air, slaps and knock on the instrument. However, as the work is not too long, they must not be too extended. These sections give a different atmosphere to the work. In general, I love works with free sections. It is always nice that composers allow participate performers in the final result of their works.

Elena Leonova sent me the score of IMPERATIVE some years ago. I liked it from the very first reading. After some attempts to programme it in my concerts, I at last premiered it at Festival Contemporaneus (Reus), in October 2023.

Leonova was also inspired by an excerpt of Psalm 114 (about the Exodus):
Tremble, earth, at the presence of the Lord,
at the presence of the God of Jacob,
who turned the rock into a pool,
the hard rock into springs of water.