A piece for Horn performed and commissioned by Saar Berger realesed by Ensemble Modern.
Figaro's Dream is dedicated to Saar Berger and was written especially for his solo album.
Several months before I composed the piece Saar and I had a short session playing together. This session was an inspiration and a starting point for this piece. Saar’s endless stream of fresh mind blowing sounds sparked too many ideas in my head at once. the composition grew from his way of playing. I was playing an instrument that used to be a well-tempered piano that I heavily prepared and retuned in microtones. I call it the "White piano". I chose to record the White Piano and make this recording a soundtrack layer for the piece. The piano may sound like an electronic instrument but it is in fact acoustic, with no computer manipulations. The timing between the piano and horn parts is flexible and the horn player may choose how to work with the soundtrack.
There are moments in which Saar is asked to sing and play. I heard Saar play and sing together on various pieces for horn and I love the way he does that. I used this element in several places, one being the glissando which opens the piece; another is a series of chords that are sung and played simultaneously, and another small absurd moment in the middle of the piece. This piece plays between these different feels, between "dead serious" and "absurd". I think that in this case I eventually don't 'take a side'. I felt as if I had too much material to start with, too many ideas, and decided not to purify the piece into just one concrete theme, and instead work with an abundance of themes, 'spill' them down to the score and see how they exist together and effect one another.