Denuo (2021)
(for soprano and orchestra)

Denuo - a five-movement piece for soprano and fourteen instruments based on texts by the Polish writer Maria Skweres is an acoustic visualisation of the inner life of a large city and its inhabitants. The texts refer to both contemporary and timeless themes of a complex socio-psychological and philosophical nature. The problem of finding one's own identity in the multifunctional machine of the modern city, the search for an isolation necessary for survival, the protection of individual sensibility, and finally the need to integrate oneself into uniform, fixed structures of the collective - these are the author's main thoughts.

The tension resulting from the confrontation of two opposing levels of musical expression plays a central role in the composition. On the one hand, there are the orchestral fragments full of uncompromising power and inhuman motor skills as a symbol of industrialisation and the collective - the lowest registers of the ensemble are particularly influential here. On the other hand, there are delicate, thoughtful soprano phrases that symbolise the fragility of the human individual.