Navona Records presents SPARKS: EYE OF LONDON, an assembly of original fanfares performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. Drawing from the compositional strengths of today’s composers, the orchestra navigates chaos and order, isolation, and ascension towards triumph through passionate orchestral writing reminiscent of the fire that burns within us. Featured on the album is composer Sergio Cervetti‘s Gated Angel, a piece inspired by his initial steps into music composition.
Today, Sergio is our featured artist on “The Inside Story,” a blog series exploring the inner workings and personalities of our composers and performers. Read on to learn about how painting and poetry inspires his work, advice for young musicians, and the impact of his early performances.
What inspires you to write and/or perform?
Painting and poetry are my favorite sources of inspiration. I was lucky to have a father who was an avid reader providing me and my sisters with an extensive library from Dante to Baudelaire and from Oscar Wilde to Horacio Quiroga which I began savoring since I was very young.
Tell us about your first performance.
My first professional performance took place in Caracas where I was invited as a winner of the chamber music prize. That took place in May of 1966 and as I remember I was the youngest composer in attendance. Penderecki was also there as well as Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt who was at that time a very influential German music critic and composer. He wrote a very good review of the work that won the Chamber Music Prize in the music magazine MELOS and my Five Episodes for Piano Trio was immediately published by Moeck Verlag in Germany.
A couple of years later Stuckenschmidt proposed my name to the D.A.A.D (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) to become composer in residence in Berlin for one year term which I did in 1969-70.
If you weren’t a musician, what would you be doing?
Most probably an astronomer since as a toddler looking at the stars and constellations my curiosity was very strongly awakened. In Dolores, my little hometown in Uruguay in the Southern Hemisphere where I grew up, I fondly remember Sirius the brightest star of all the sky; flashing, scintillating and glowing as a mighty diamond during the winter nights. The Magellan Clouds in the summer were also my favorites. One of the movements of my piano trilogy Tres Estudios Australes is named after them.
What advice do you have for young musicians?
My advice will be to trust your teachers for half of the way and then find your own way, whatever it will be. Simply put: please yourself first!
If we looked through your music library, what would we be surprised to find?
Probably my collection of all the Wagner operas, as well as my collection of cookbooks.
What are your other passions besides music?
I don’t really have any other passions or hobbies. Unless listening to and discussing Wagner, Monteverdi, and Bach might count as passion.
Sergio Cervetti left his native Uruguay in 1962 to study composition in the United States. In 1966 he attracted international attention when he won the chamber music prize at the Caracas, Venezuela Music Festival. After studying with Ernst Krenek and Stefan Grové and graduating from Peabody Conservatory, he was subsequently invited to be Composer-in-Residence in Berlin, Germany in 1969-70.
