Suite for violin and Symphonic Orchestra by Oscar Navarro

LATENT EMOTIONS is a suite with which I intend to show the audience the power of music and its capacity to spark several different moods, to awaken our emotions and to make us feel. It also aims to make the listener an active participant of the piece. Composed in four movements, each one will attempt to provoke a unique experience, very personal but shared by every single one of the constituents of a musical performance (soloist, players, conductor, listener and composer) in that very precise moment of musical inception.

The piece begins in a subtle and captivating fashion, with a soft and enchanting air of a tango in which the soloist aims to seduce the listener and to create a feeling of permanent attraction. Progressively the orchestra gains more presence, with a much more energetic and passionate ending that contrasts its peaceful beginning.

In the second movement we are submerged in a state of ease and relaxation, where the simple melodic lines played by the soloist are combined with an exquisite harmonic treatment of the strings.By using percussion effects and the beautiful sonority of the Tibetan bowls, I attempt to transport the listener to a new environment, to induce on them a profound feeling of inner peace. In this movement breathing is also treated musically as a primary element of interpretation.

The third movement erupts very abruptly, and eradicates that previous state of ease, thus provoking a new feeling of anger and frustration, stress, which is nonetheless normal on our daily lives. An endless ostinato will increase our anxiety and our heartbeat rate, and this will cause an inconsistent breathing, which again will form an active part of the score.

The fourth and final movement will inflict a final twist onto our emotional state, giving us two of the most sought after feelings: happiness and joy. Music, in its purest essence, will bring up the levels of serotonin in our bodies, helping us to achieve a state of fury and ecstasy.

In this last movement, which will lift up the mood of the audience, the solo violin will be able to explore its technical abilities and to interact with the different sections of the orchestra. It is a movement that injects happiness into the audience, with a rhythmic character and changes in tempo meters; with nothing stable everything becomes pure rhythmic movement.

I hope for this piece, “LATENT EMOTIONS”, to accomplish its true objective: to cause an emotional reaction in the listener through one of the widest channels of communication, music. ENJOY!