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Interview with Fabián Panisello

Composer in Residence 2025

Matias Alzola

Published: 04/11/2024

Fabián Panisello, Composer in Residence 2025, in an interview about his new work and its premiere on August 24th in Grafenegg.

Describe your music for someone who has never heard it before.

We hear music on various levels. There are always multiple layers in the works I like, even on first listening. I try to integrate an instantly accessible level into my music, plus an interweaving of layers you only discover on repeated listening.

You’re the first Latin American Composer in Residence of the Grafenegg Festival, but you also studied in Salzburg, were inspired by European composers, and lived for many years in Madrid. Do you feel part of an Argentinian or Latin American tradition?

So one can listen to your music without prior knowledge and find depth at the same time?

Yes, music you can simply listen to, that’s not just for experts. I’m against this cult-like perspective on contemporary music from last century.

You’re the first Latin American Composer in Residence of the Grafenegg Festival, but you also studied in Salzburg, were inspired by European composers, and lived for many years in Madrid.

Do you feel part of an Argentinian or Latin American tradition?

Argentina is a land of immigrants, which is maybe why it has a cosmopolitan outlook. Even in my youth, that influenced me and awakened my curiosity for diverse music, film and literature. It led me to think independently and not to rely on existing aesthetic schools. In contemporary music, I see two tendencies: firstly, schools or aesthetics that many young composers follow because they offer obvious points of reference. Secondly, independent composers like Berio, Ligeti, Eötvös and Mahler: they were part of historical tendencies, but they travelled their own paths independently of fashions or rules. These are the ones I identify with.

The workshop Ink Still Wet combines the three disciplines in which you work: composition, conducting and education. How has your work as a conductor affected your composing?

It made me conscious of the dimension of practice. Sometimes young composers see things in an abstract way. As a conductor I’ve experienced this a lot, with my own works and others’. My experience is useful, because I can pass it onto my students, and we carry on making improvements until the end, even in rehearsals. Often you don’t notice something’s missing, or unnecessary, until the premiere.

Sometimes I get the impression that people are deliberately seeking niches in contemporary music. Does it make sense to put up a barrier between tradition and the contemporary?

I think it’s wrong to see contemporary music as something separate. Which doesn’t mean that it’s not unique, just as the musics of the Baroque or Impressionism are unique. I think it’s more about quality than about particular ideological or aesthetic categorisations. Niches restrict focus. People are interested in contemporary music, but they expect something that moves and surprises them. So for me there are no barriers between styles and epochs, but there’s a very tangible difference between high and low quality.