Hugues Dufourt has just completed a cycle which began at the Witten Days for New Chamber Music with the premieres of L’Afrique d’après Tiepolo (2005) and L’Asie d’après Tiepolo (2009). L’Europe d’après Tiepolo, premiered on 7 October 2011 at the Festival “Musica” in Strasbourg and repeated two days later at “Musikprotokoll” in Graz, then in the Netherlands and Belgium, was once again inspired by the Tiepolo’s frescos for the grand staircase at the Würzburg Residenz. And like the two first parts of the cycle, this composition is also characterised by formal innovations and new sound associations. Here, in particular, the composer applies his recent and striking discoveries in writing for wind instruments (used in his last orchestral piece Voyage par-delà les fleuves et les monts): the wind instruments in the ensemble no longer develop polyphony from counterpoint, but from their own sounds. Undoubtedly it is a musical experience of profound richness which the composer conveys to the audience, an experience of maturity. Dufourt’s music is structured to be a projection of timbres and their blends, in which the energy and depth of Tiepolo’s painting is expressed.
Brice Pauset has written a Kontra-Konzert for Andreas Staier. It was premiered on 18 September 2011 in the Philharmonie Cologne and is intended to reflect Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto op. 58, serving as a symbolic and intimate mirror of self-examination. In characteristic fashion, Pauset never loses sight of his musical origins. In autumn 2010 his work Schlag-Kantilene, written for David Grimal and Peter Eötvös, was premiered in the Salle Pleyel. This is a concerto for violin and orchestra linked to Beethoven’s work for the same forces, his Violin Concerto op. 61. Pauset has even composed cadences for this key work, which have been published by Éditions Henry Lemoine. In his Kontra-Konzert (also written for Andreas Staier’s fortepiano, like the Kontra-Sonate of 2000 inspired by Schubert) Pauset’s passion for early instruments is combined with his thirst to travel to the roots of his aesthetic emotions.
With a single note as his starting point, Bruno Mantovani has created an entire universe. Upon one note was premiered on 13 October 2011 by the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig under Riccardo Chailly as part of an extensive programme of commissions and concerts based around the symphonies of Beethoven. According to the commission wording, Mantovani’s work is “in affinity with the 4th Symphony of Beethoven” which was performed directly after the premiere of Upon one note. Audiences could judge the connections between the two works, as Mantovani intended. The concerto was performed again in Leipzig on 14 October, with further performances on a tour by the orchestra in Vienna, Paris and London. Mantovani’s compositional style has long shown Beethovenian traits, also concerning the dramaturgy (in relation to the variability of the passage of time). In this context, that which is heard again is never identical. Is the B flat which starts and ends the piece in the bass intended to be like the B flat in the Beethoven?
Benoît Walther
(Translation: Elizabeth Robinson)
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