Luis Saglie: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1 – 3

Description

The three Piano Sonatas featured on this recording serve as a true autobiographical note about my musical offering, resonating with the deepest grains of truth. They span a period of 19 years of artistic evolution and search for a true musical identity.
Through my life experience of having held residencies in 7 different countries within 4 continents, each sonata claims a particular country and cultural surrounding which is responsible for the custom-tailored attributes which they each adopted. The first sonata, composed for my dear friend, István Mátyás, was written in 2003 while I was still a student in Vienna, Austria. The second sonata, written for my younger sister, Meriette Saglie, came about fifteen years later in 2018 while living in Santiago, Chile, and already well established as a university professor of Composition. Four years later, in 2022, the third sonata was composed in Sydney, Australia, where I currently reside. This last sonata was written for pianist Stefan Stroissnig, who has brought life to all three piano sonatas on this recording with his superb portrayal of a colorful, tender, brilliant, and powerful pianistic touch along with deep musical understanding.
Despite the vast time span between the composition of these three sonatas, all are unified by distinctive elements that transparently define my music. Complex and irregular rhythms, rich chromaticism, and hints of free tonality establish a theatrical and programmatic essence at their core. Anchoring these piano sonatas is my deep connection to past musical traditions, which I approached through a personalized avant-garde perspective.

Piano Sonata No.1, “Mosaiques after Neruda” (2003)
The work represents a crucial time in my development as a composer, marking the beginning of my passionate exploration of chromaticism influenced by musical traditions spanning from late Romanticism to the Second Viennese School. Given my youthful age at the time, it is clear in retrospect why I connected so strongly with Pablo Neruda’s Love Poem No. 20 from his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Desperation, drawing inspiration for this work. I have always been amazed by how a 19-year-old Neruda could understand and express so much about love, crafting such timeless masterpieces. As I delved deeper into his work, I realized that Neruda was not necessarily drawing from personal experience but rather capturing his impressions of love. This insight guided me as I composed my first piano sonata.
I aimed to mirror Neruda’s creative method, particularly through the musical underscoring of the recited poem, which appears in full in the fourth and final movement. The work takes on a cyclical form, reflecting various aspects, emotions, and subtleties of love ingrained in Neruda’s literary work.
Throughout the first three movements, listeners will experience a continuous metamorphosis of a main theme and motif. These movements subtly hint at the complexities and nuances of love. The initial five notes weave in and out of these movements, along with a sense of duality depicted by the presence of minor, major, and augmented second intervals, hinting at passion, longing, and melancholy.
The fourth movement serves as the culmination of this journey, where the previously hinted theme and emotions reveal themselves in a unified and coherent synthesis of music and words. It is in this fourth movement that listeners find themselves with full transparency of the developments from the prior three movements. Here, a narrator joins the pianist, reciting the poem in its entirety against musical underscore. This collaboration of music and poetry aims to provide a deeper and more immersive understanding of Neruda’s work, allowing the listener to experience the full emotional and artistic impact of the poem.
The music evolves in response to the recollection of the pains once caused by love, rather than responding to pain currently inflicted by love. The ideal narrative approach, paired with the transparent musical identity in the fourth movement, should not be extrovertly explosive or pain-stricken, but rather reflective and introspective, offering a space for learning and growth.
I hope that this Sonata allows you to connect with Neruda’s work on a new and profound level, experiencing the beauty and depth of his impressions of love.

Piano Sonata No. 2, “Las Mil Calles” (2018)
The second sonata follows in the path of its predecessor by adopting the grand four-movement structure. Without consciously setting out to do so, both sonatas mirror each other in their internal flow from movement to movement, departing from the traditionally expected firm-set first movement leading into a more reserved second. Instead, both sonatas commence with an inward restraint of motion in search of the best path to present intense emotions of various sorts.
The second sonata is definitely an extension of myself as a composer, marked by an inherited Viennese tradition. Yet, unlike the first, it ventures quite extensively in its language as it also absorbs elements from a new world that has always set forth its own musical voice, based on showing European traditions through new musical aesthetics marked by personalized harmonic and rhythmic elements of its region. This synthesis of two worlds can be appreciated particularly in the second movement, through the journey on which it takes the listener. Quartal harmonies, extensive fugato treatment, and a technical approach that seems to imitate the plucking of a Latin folk guitar all play a protagonistic role.
“Las Mil Calles” refers to a sector within a particular suburb in Chile’s capital, Santiago, comprised of a multitude of small streets known as the “Thousand Streets” (Las Mil Calles). While residing there, I experienced social settings as authentic as can be, which marked my imagination firmly. A process of rediscovering my origins took place, stemming from Chilean roots, yet having lived most of my life in other countries. Childhood memories of life in Chile were extremely different from what I encountered upon returning as an adult. This musical work not only represents this new perspective but also important personal and social life experiences that began to develop for me. Vastly descriptive with regard to the different places and characters that wander through “Las Mil Calles,” one encounters in this work nostalgia, madness, and supernatural experiences linked to my study of spiritism, a study which flourishes extensively in this country.

Piano Sonata No.3, “The Garden of Earthly Delights” (2022)
There is a clear artistic link between the second and third sonatas, leaving the first to stand on its own unique pedestal. It impresses me to see how the first managed to influence vital elements in the creation of both the second and third sonatas. In this one, there is an initial prologue setting forth all motivic and conceptual elements, which will then transcend into the following three movements. These three movements are strongly unified and linked to one another by the shared musical elements established in the prologue. It is this particular characteristic of creation that the first sonata managed to pass on. Where this sonata stands independent of the other two is with regard to form and structure. While there are four physical parts to its inner construction, we are not really in front of four distinctive movements.
The Garden of Earthly Delights by the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch is one of his greatest masterpieces. This is a triptych oil painting on an oak panel, which, when closed, offers us yet another panel to intake. The Piano Sonata is a parallel representation of what, for me, the painting is portraying. The sonata’s musical form is closely bound to the physical construction of Bosch’s painting. When closed, we have an independent panel (Prologue) preparing the presentation of the three inner panels. Once open, we can appreciate the triptych with its three panels, which are meant to be observed from left to right (Movements I-II-III). When open, the proportions of all three panels are mirrored within the proportions between the three movements of the sonata once past the Prologue.
The first movement (Bosch – Panel I) is held together by a continuous and uninterrupted heart-pulsing “A,” depicting the humanistic purity of man in front of the Creator. The second movement (Bosch – Panel II) vividly shows the grotesque and gradual exploitation of beauty and nature at the hands of man. Finally, the third movement (Bosch – Panel III) depicts the eternal hell and suffering of man as a result of previous actions, depicted thoroughly with the citing of “Dies Irae,” the “Day of Wrath,” against the reminiscent pulsing heartbeat “A” from the first movement.
For months, I composed this work with Hieronymus Bosch’s painting hanging above my work desk. This allowed me to stare at it with fixed eyes and much intensity, absorbing the overwhelming details of this work, which was in every way ahead of its time with its surreal and, at times, grotesque depictions. The music that emerged is a transparent representation of my perception of what Bosch was attempting to convey, offering a musical interpretation of his imaginative portrayal of fantastical settings. Whenever possible, one should listen to this sonata while staring endlessly at the corresponding panel, hoping that the experience will approximate what I lived day in and day out while composing this work.
I render my gratitude to my wife, Constanza, for having provided me with my own copy of The Garden of Earthly Delights, which accompanied me through the process of composition, as well as for having guided me to discover and connect in depth with this masterpiece by Hieronymus Bosch.