Description
Fiery earth (2024) (Terra encesa) for string quartet is a commission from LA FUNDACIÓ ORFEÓ CATALÀ-PALAU DE LA MÚSICA CATALANA and CUARTETO CASALS and is dedicated to Cuarteto Casals. The premiere took place on March 19, 2025, at the concert hall of the Palau de la Musica Catalana in Barcelona. This piece is currently being performed by the Cuarteto Casals in their 2025-26 tour in Europe, Canada and the USA.
Fiery earth is an homage to the creative power of the earth, an entity envisioned as a live organism, with its repetitive cycles of transformation and regeneration. The formal structure is a loosely constructed, one-movement passacaglia based on a three-bar ostinato reminiscent of Gregorian chant. This ostinato is varied and develops throughout the piece, continuously progressing in tempo and dynamics towards a dramatic finale. This thematic development is a ‘metaphor’ for the earth’s transformations although this work is not programmatic. The musical language is modal/tonal with some harmonic references to the music of Spain although integrated within an international musical idiom.
Extract below from a recent review on The New Music (after a performance at the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam) written by on September 20, 2025
Terra Encesa
The violinists then switched positions to play, now with the rock-solid and reliable Vera Martínez Mehner as the first violinist, a modern commissioned piece by Elisenda Fábregas (born 1955) from Catalonia. Her 1924 work , Fiery Earth (Terra Encesa), is a tribute to the creative power of the earth, imagined as a living organism, with repetitive cycles of transformation. Fábregas: “The formal structure is a single-walled passacaglia based on a three-bar ostinato reminiscent of Gregorian chants, used in variation form, developed throughout the piece, and continually progressing in tempo and dynamics toward a dramatic conclusion. This thematic development functions as a ‘metaphor’ for the earth’s transformations, although this work is not programmatic. The musical language is modal/tonal with some harmonic references to the music of Spain, yet integrated within an international musical idiom.” Firmly anchored in the earth and now with modern bows, the Cuarteto Casals delivered this robust and imposing work with power and urgency, as if to say: let us stop playing with fire and stop scorching the earth, for its forces are stronger than ours, and nature will always ultimately prevail. It had the feel of both a requiem and a hopeful plea for a better future. Fiery Earth , as it were, connected Bach’s music with the music of today, moving from silence and contemplation to ever-increasing intensity, cutting through the soul.
