THE VOYAGE WITHIN’

THE MUSIC OF G. I. GURDJIEFF (1877-1949) AND T. DE HARTMANN (1885-1956)

UGO BONESSI, PIANO

“The Voyage Within” CD represents a sentimental and reasoned journey through the musical inheritance of Gurdjieff and de Hartmann.
Such music was conceived between 1925 and 1927 as a result of the creative collaboration between Thomas de Hartmann , a Russian composer with a strong academic education and an outstanding member, along with Kandinsky, of the avant-garde artistic movement called “Der Blue Reiter”, and George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, a philosopher, spiritual guide, teacher of sacred dances, writer and whose adventurous life is described in the autobiographic novel “Meetings with remarkable men”.
According to Gurdjieff, music holds the power of expressing the spirit of the sacred and representing the laws that rule the cosmos. Due to this, a great deal of musicians and artists have approached his teachings and have studied and applied Gurdjieff’s ideas to their fields of interest. Among these, other than De Hartmann, we might recall Henri Pousseur the electronic composer , Narciso Yepes the guitar player, Keith Jarrett the jazz musician and the eclectic Franco Battiato.
Despite the fact that Gurdjieff’s ideas were spread in Europe since the middle of the 20th century, thanks to the availability of texts published by Gurdjieff himself and some of his pupils and exegetes, the piano compositions were actually unknown to many people. The publication of such music (still ongoing) has been undertaken by one of the most well-known musical editions publishers, thus allowing wider fruition of his music.
As the title suggests, “The Voyage Within” is a selection of introspective pieces in which, with the exception of some more folkloric pieces (Gurdjieff was greek-armenian but his compositions collect reminiscences from his travels in far-eastern countries), a holy-like aura dominates. The titles show Gurdjeff’s deep Christian roots and his great attention to the Islamic tradition. Therefore, even though it was written in the classical musical notation, this music goes far beyond the musical tradition of its time, both in spirit and substance, thus rendering useless every possible reference to classical piano repertoires. In fact Frank Lloyd Wright, the great American architect, called Gurdjieff’s and de Hartmann’s production “…a music of another world”.
This CD is the result of fourteen years of study and research and selected recordings done over a period of six years.
The performer, recording this music in his home-studio, aims to transmit the concentration needed to drive the listener into this interior and intimate journey.

Ugo Bonessi was born in Rome in 1961. His performance activity, other than traditional piano repertoire, concentrated on selected and strongly desired choices: Russian music, voice-piano duo, contemporary music. He has also studied traditional Indian vocal music, harmonic chant and vocal diplophonies. He has played Gurdjieff / De Hartmann music in several events (Italy, Holland, Dominican Republic) for which he is now considered one of the most interesting performers.

“Ugo Bonessi… has devoted his life to this music. He sincerely loves it. His long involvement attests to the deep understanding he has developed of the Gurdjieff music and to his ability to transmit its energy”
(Dimitri Peretzi, President of Gurdjieff Foundation of Greece)

“Most typical of his serious approach, he absorbed Gurdjieff's and De Hartmann's music for many, many years, before attempting this first CD. In my opinion, his attempt is most successful”
(Wim van Dullemen, President of [Gurdjieff] Movements Foundation, Holland)


cod. CDC0174
Edizioni Musicali III Millennio

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