On October 21, Jasmina Kulaglić brought Chopin, Borodin, Glinka and Khachaturian to the sounds of the ACOUHYB (Acoustic Hybrid Piano) at Casa Llotja in Barcelona.
Jasmina Kulaglić is a Serbian pianist currently based in Paris who has recorded for the Naxos and Calliope labels, which has now released her new album “Dumka”, with great reviews around Europe. Nurtured by the traditions of the Russian school of pianists, then that of Claudio Arrau, she has performed as a soloist with different orchestras, in many countries, and she has won many international prizes as a pianist.
After her performance on 21st of October, she explained to me her experience with Musical Innovators. She learned about ACOUHYB through social networks, “where Sergey Gogolev's personality radiates inventiveness –she says– From our first contact, I found the project very interesting. After two years of communication, we decided to collaborate.”
The logistics are always difficult; she just met the ACOUHYB Piano the morning of the concert: “I only worked two hours. Indeed, the first contact was surprising, but I found great possibilities in this opening of the sound.” For her, the shortest way of describing this piano would be "open piano". “This can take on different meanings –she tells me– of course the sound option, but perhaps also human openness, an adventure of creativity.”
She performed Chopin’s Mazurkas op. 7, Polonaise en ut mineur op. 40 n° 2, Valse en do dièse mineur op.64 n°2 and Polonaise en La majeur op. 40 n° 1, Borodin’s Petite Suite, Au couvent, Intermezzo and Mazurka, Glinka’s La Séparation and Souvenir d’une Mazurka, and Khachaturian’s Toccata en mi bémol mineur. She has often been requested this program after her CD’s release, “linking Chopin, also a Slavic composer, with the Russian composers to whom my disc is dedicated”, she explains. Moreover, she thinks that ACOUHYB’s sound of the second register “is well suited for romantic pieces, not too fast, with a structure clear enough to be able to listen to the timbre of the melodic line”.
To know Jasmina better, we should speak in the music language instead of words: “In my life, I am a concert pianist, also a professor at the Pôle Supérieur in Paris, open to young professional pianists. Recently, I almost only go to concerts. The pedagogical transmission is beautiful, but the artistic transmission is done magnificently on stage. Music is the center of my life. It takes us into other dimensions, higher, more subtle. Therein resides, for me, the future of humanity: with the opening of the heart, with benevolence, with beauty and goodness to be shared with all.”
So let’s listen to her music, to all music, and let’s open our hearing to ACOUHYB: “I hope this project will develop, because it is always good to go beyond the limits and experiment beyond what we have known for a very long time.” Many Romantics wanted to transcend spoken language to reach something new, sublime, the Infinite that they could just sense. Maybe it is impossible to get the Absolute –they said– but we must try, and this effort will get us closer to it. I do not know if they reached Infinite, but they reached human emotions in a way no one had before. Nowadays, their world is alive through music, innovations as ACOUHYB and concerts like Jasmina’s.
Nadja Bas
