Santiago Baez uses the rainbow as a metaphor for hope and consolation. In Arkenciel V, different influences meet across three movements, with original lyricism and Hindemith as a possible spiritual mentor.
Concert notes · Arno Bornkamp
The Spanish composer Santiago Baez (1982) took another weather phenomenon as the starting point for his work “ARKENCIEL V” (2023): the rainbow, used here as a metaphor for ideas such as hope and consolation.
This work also has three movements: fast, slow, fast. It is fascinating to hear how Baez brings different influences together into a single compositional style, in which the influential German twentieth-century composer Paul Hindemith seems to emerge as Baez’s ‘spiritual mentor from afar’.
Baez excels in his highly original lyricism. He is himself an eminent pianist and a professor at the Conservatorio Superior in Cordoba, and writes superbly for the different instruments. Above all, however, it is the wealth of his ideas that makes “Arkenciel V” a masterpiece.
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