24 May 2021
Photo courtesy of The Royal Circle Artistic of Barcelona
Long before Marián Budos became the Head of the Music Department at Narrabundah College, music had always been central to his world.
He began learning at age 6 and after a short break to pursue an athletics career, he rediscovered his love for composing, writing and playing music.
Marián found international success this year, when he combined his love for music and literature into concerto projects.
On 21 April this year, Adrià's Confessions, a book-concerto composed by Marián, premiered at Barcelona's Palau de la Música.
“I had no intention to write a book-concerto. In 2016 I saw Confessions by Catalonian novelist Jaume Cabré at a bookstore and it instantly caught me. It covered the whole spectrum of humanity. I could not put it down. I hadn’t enjoyed a piece of art the way I’ve enjoyed that book,” Marián said.
Feeling inspired, he approached Cabré about adapting the novel and with the author’s blessing, began musically recreating the work of Cabré in a composition.
While other concertos may be inspired by a book, Marián wanted Adrià's Confessions to be a direct translation of language and words to musical notes and so coined the term book-concerto to describe this new form of composition.
“In the past, people have been inspired by books and used them loosely, instead, I made a translation of book into music. The plots are perfectly followed from the book and each character is represented by a different instrument,” Marián said.
The concerto musically recreates each chapter of the book and presents the audience a new way to experience the novel’s emotive story.
“Say there’s dialogue between two characters, it means I can only use those two instruments. For example, when the guitar and the harp play a duet, the audience can tell that its two people talking. Then I use the orchestra carefully as backing to convey emotion. The music beautifully paints the picture of what’s happening,” Marián said.
The production hit a bump in the road in 2020, where just months before it was to premiere, the world was gripped by a global pandemic. For everyone’s safety and wellbeing, the premiere had to be postponed.
Finally, four years after he picked up the book for the first time, Adrià's Confessions premiered by the Orchestra of the Reial Cercle Artístic de Barcelona at the Palau de la Música.
Although disappointed that he couldn’t be there to conduct the orchestra himself, Marian understood that the show must go on and has already got to work, translating a new book into a book-concerto.
Marian received an artsACT grant for this project and over a dozen of Australian and Spanish organisations and agencies were involved in bringing the production to life, including the Australian Embassy in Madrid, Australian Music Centre, Editorial Proa, Agencia Literaria Carmen Balcells, Orquestra del Reial Cercle Artístic de Barcelona, Reial Cercle Artístic de Barcelona, Ramon Llull Insitut, Contrapunto Vocale, Sing Fusió, Cor de Cambra de Sant Cugat, Koblach Strings,etc.
You can listen to Adrià's Confessions here: Estrena de "Les confessions d'Adrià" de Marian Budos, obra basada en "Jo confesso" de Jaume Cabré 
.
Marián Budos, Head of the Music Department at Narrabundah College