“Instants d’hiver” (“Winter Instants”) starts in a frenzy of seemingly orchestral whirlwinds, like a Disney cartoon orchestra going berserk. However, the mood changes and slower tempi evolve, and a murmur of a winter storm (?) is perceptible at a distance, until rhythmic echoes of horse shoe clatters are mixed with sudden voices of children, and maybe little feet running up and down staircases. Yes, as you may understand, this is a mixture’s mixture, overflowing with ideas that are barely expressed until they’re denied! Holy medallion! This piece rocks, in a musique concrète way!

Teruggi explains that he has re-used sounds from older works of his, both released and not, giving them new identities, and that he dedicates this tough medicine to “the different musical currents of the GRM”. I even hear echoes of composers far from the GRM, as for example Åke Hodell from Sweden, but maybe that wasn’t intentional – or maybe it was… Here and there I get associations to Alain Savouret’s “Don Quixotte Corporation”, which can be found on a Wergo CD (WER 2021-50). I particularly like the children voices permutations, bordering on sound poetry. Both sound poetry and musique concrète are French specialties, and the French are experts at this. Daniel Teruggi comes from Argentina, but he’s probably a naturalized Frenchman by now, being the Artistic Director of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales.

“Summer Band” utilizes the bandonéon, the portable organ of Argentina, and sounds quite different from “Instants d’hiver”. Teruggi manipulates the sounds of the instrument, but maintains that he keeps the general breath of the organ. To this I agree. In fact, in many instances this is plain bandonéon music. I am not particularly impressed by this piece, simply because the mixture of acoustic instruments and electroacoustics is a very tough feat, which not many composers can make much of. There are exceptions, of course, like “Sarangi” by Swedish composer Ingvar Karkoff (Indian instrument Sarangi) as well as Tommy Zwedberg’s “Hanging” (An old Swedish lyre) and Horacio Vaggione’s “Tar” (Clarinet), but Teruggi’s piece here does not work, and is just boring in this context.