Red horse chestnut
1 sound
Current age: Mature
Size at maturity: 20m
Species native to: Hybrid: Cross between Horse Chestnut and Red Buckeye (South East North America)
Tree identification number: 0HHA
Composer name
Marketa Conkova
About the composer:
Marketa Conkova was born in Prague, Czech Republic. Her musical beginnings started with piano lessons at the age of six. She later enrolled to the Prague Conservatoire, where she studied composition for six years under doc. Eduard Douša and later at the Academy of Performing Arts under Prof. Ivan Kurz. Currently, she studies composition at the Royal Academy of Music under Prof. Gary Carpenter. Apart from music Marketa is interested in movies, books and cooking.
About the tree:
In April and May, the tree produces beautiful scarlet flowers. The misshappen cankers on the trunks of mature specimens are a distinctive feature. Like it's cousin it suffers from bleeds on the trunk indicating the presence of disease, a problem compounded by a leaf mining insect lava which affects the foliage from mid summer.
About the composition:
The character of music for the red-horse chestnut was defined by its lovely flowers. This was the common element, which I wanted to include in each piece for this species. The only component, which resulted in the slight alteration of the sound, is the position and the size of each tree. As I was listening to the sound of the wind as it creates the sound of rustling of the leaves, it brought me to the idea of using flutes and harp. Also particulary in this case I felt a strong connection between these trees and friends of mine. So the shape of their branches evoke in me different chracteristics, which I later tried to express. The simplicity that all of these trees share is due to their small size. They also share the same space, so their sound is quite similar.
