"In Hyperion, Giulio Colangelo has sought out instrumental solutions capable of transforming a held sound into a continuous timbral mutation, manipulating this sound to the utmost, creating a kind of Klangfarbenmelodie. Already the author of many works that combine instrumental music, electronics and visual elements, Colangelo conceived Hyperion as an intermedia architec­ ture, a concertante installation, with live electronics and reactive lighting. In the Potenza con­ cert, the performer appeared “caged” inside vertically placed LED tubes, like columns that lit up with pulses synchronized to the music. This also explains the title, referring to the mythological figure of Hyperion, as a pillar and titan of the East, who precedes the sun, but also to Hölderlin’s Hyperion, for the pantheistic idea of the human being becoming one with nature. The formal structure, extremely calculated, is marked by clear elements of interpunctuation, with long held chords like columns of sound that appear shortly after the beginning, as an expansion of the long initial B­flat, and a little before the end, in a «dreamy, suspended» epilogue, which dissolves back to a B­flat. The score is constructed through a refined exploration of timbre, exploiting the bajan’s different forms of vibrato, fluttering, bellow oscillations and wide dynamic excursions, alternating between held sounds, clusters, nervous flourishes and sudden bursts, of a gestural and noisy character. The electronics part is very impulsive, with fast transients, and is based on material previously recorded with the performer and re­synthesized; it merges closely with the instrumental part, and is often triggered by the performer’s own gestures, such as quick shakes on the bellows, chin shifts and accents created with the knee (lifting the knee slowly and then dropping the heel to the floor)"

Gianluigi Mattietti

from the liner notes of the album 'FLY - Electronic Music for Accordion' by Germano Scurti.