Agustín Fernández
Fuego
(1987)
The title of this work refers to an utterly unromantic kind of fire: the fire that, on 2 July 1986, burned two Chilean students outside Santiago. It was a man-made fire, resulting from soldiers pouring kerosene and deliberately setting the youngsters alight. This was, it seems, some kind of exemplary punishment Pinochet’s people had wanted to impart; for this purpose, they picked their two victims apparently at random from a dispersing crowd during a national strike.
Fire had been a pervasive element of Chilean life during this period. The presidential palace had burned as Pinochet came to power, civil rights campaigner Sebastián Acevedo had burned himself alive in protest at Pinochet’s atrocities, and candles had been lit in the streets at night to commemorate the dead in the mid-1980s.
In 1987 this piece was a protest too, as well as a threnody for the dead and a eulogy for the courage of those Chileans who, in the face of real danger, revolted on. But also, I confess, Fuego is an expression of fascination, of hipnosis at this strange recurrence of fire. The changing guises of fire in different situations suggested the structure: a theme and seven variations.
Fuego was commissioned by the Orchestra of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool, and it was first performed by them under James Wishart, at the Cathedral, on 23 May 1987. It is dedicated to the two victims, Rodrigo Rojas de Negri and Carmen Gloria Quintana.
© Agustín Fernández
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