Las Furias

“LAS FURIAS” (2024), by the Argentine-Dutch composer Carlos Michans (1951), is a work for soprano saxophone, alto saxophone and piano.

As the title suggests, this three-movement work is inspired by the ancient Greek myth in which the Erinyes (Furiae in Latin) act as goddesses of vengeance, ensuring that criminals are punished.

It is a composition in which hushed solo passages alternate with intense eruptions, the instruments tumbling over each other in rhythmically complex passages. This makes considerable demands on the players’ virtuosity. The pianist in particular must possess an exceptional command of the instrument, while the two saxophonists counterbalance this by often joining forces as a two-headed ‘monster’.

Yet the work finds its meaning above all in its extraordinary build-up of tension, with contrasts and a kaleidoscopic sound as its defining qualities. Carlos Michans is a visual artist as well as a composer, and these two sides of his work come together beautifully in “LAS FURIAS”. He is also a virtuoso at playing on the listener’s imagination: in the second movement, for example, he seems to take you from a barren landscape into a sensual dream, after which the piano, in its solo passage, seems to disappear into the depths from a high cliff. Or consider the moment in the intensely rhythmic (sometimes even swinging) third movement when a vast soundscape emerges from the piano part. With the help of the two saxophones, it grows to almost hallucinatory proportions before returning to the original rhythmic foundation. This visual aspect gives the composition the timelessness that characterises much music of lasting significance.

“LAS FURIAS” is an eruption of countless conscious and unconscious musical and visual references, cascading over the audience.