Ivan Buffa: Identity

The works on this album give convincing proof of Ivan Buffa’s multifaceted musical gift. Probably the most surprising common feature of these works is their brevity, even if this has little to do with the ascetic brevity typical of, say, Webern. The String Quartet with its 16-minute playing time is a notable exception here. In his own words, Ivan Buffa found his way to his personal style by a happy combination of traditional compositional foundation, transmitted to him by the legendary methodological strategies of Jozef Podprocky, and a delicate, modern rhythmic colour that he acquired in the class of Michael Jarrell. His KAIROS portrait album contains solo works for recorder (performed by Tosiya Suzuki) and violin (Yasutaka Hemmi) next to a variety of ensemble works. The Slovak Quasars Ensemble, of which Ivan Buffa is the mastermind and conductor, also makes a convincing debut on KAIROS with this portrait of an exceptional young artist.