• Minas Borboudakis
  • Z - 4383 (2018)
    (for large ensemble)

  • Henry Litolff’s Verlag GmbH & Co. KG (World)
  • 1(pic).1.0(bcl)+bb-cl.1/0+f-hn.0+bb-tpt.1(btbn).0/2perc/pf/acn/str
  • 12 min

Programme Note

Z-4383 describes the journey of the railway carriage of the same name in which the body of the politician and pacifist Grigoris Lambrakis, also known as Z, who was murdered in 1963, was transported from Thessaloniki to Athens. In the scene from the cult novel Z by Vassilis Vassilikos, the author has Grigoris Lambrakis' soul fly over the train. Throughout the journey, the soul poetically describes and philosophises about life, people, injustice and the longing for that which is lost.

In my ensemble work, I take up the longing and poetics of the scene. Various musical material from my opera Z, which premiered in 2017, is transformed here, with the soul as a protagonist who observes the musical events from a bird's eye view. Train noises, distorted fragments of speech and ever ascending lines unfold the music. Sequences in which pain, longing, hope and despair are expressed return as wordless instrumental quotations and attempt to depict the unspeakable before the soul leaves the body at the end of the work.

Minas Borboudakis, Mai 2022

Scores