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Oeuvres Pour Orchestre
Oeuvres Pour Orchestre
Première:
Voyage par-delà les fleuves et les monts
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LES INTERPRÈTES disques de musique de chambre (Martinu, Le Flem, Cras, Pierné, d’Indy,
Huré). Après les directions successives de David Shallon et Bramwell
Tovey, la nomination d’Emmanuel Krivine confirme la réputation inter-
Pierre-André Valade nationale de l’Orchestre.
Chef principal d’Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen depuis septembre
2009, Directeur musical de l’Ensemble Court-circuit de 1991 à 2008,
Pierre-André Valade fait ses débuts symphoniques en 1996 avec la Tu-
rangalîla Symphonie d’Olivier Messiaen au Festival of Perth (Austra-
lie), à la tête du West Australian Symphony Orchestra. Il reçoit alors de
nombreuses invitations en Europe, parmi lesquelles celle du Bath Inter-
national Music Festival où il dirige le London Sinfonietta avec lequel il
commence une collaboration régulière. C’est à la tête de cet ensemble
qu’il participe à l’hommage rendu à Pierre Boulez au South Bank Cen-
tre en 2000 pour le soixante-quinzième anniversaire du compositeur. Si
Pierre-André Valade dirige régulièrement les plus importants ensembles
européens dévoués au répertoire de la musique de notre temps, on le
retrouve également depuis plusieurs années à la tête de grandes for-
mations symphoniques — comme le BBC Symphony, le Philharmonia,
Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, RTÉ National Symphony Or-
chestra Ireland, la Tonhalle de Zurich — dans des œuvres majeures du
répertoire (Mahler, Debussy, Ravel, Wagner, Stravinsky, Bartók…)..
© Timpani
monographies d’œuvres de Klaus Huber, Ivo Malec, Hugues Dufourt ou
Sylvano Bussotti. Mais l’Orchestre a également diversifié son activité en
enregistrant des opéras (Le Pays de Ropartz, Polyphème de Jean Cras,
Sophie Arnould de Pierné), et en réalisant avec ses chefs de pupitre des
6
Hugues Dufourt et Pierre-André Valade
© Claude Dufêtre
7
DISQUIET fields, ramifications, whirls, textures... The orchestra seems to possess a
spontaneity allowing it to engender an indefinite plurality in itself.’
Martin Kaltenecker So, rather than transposing acoustic models (as in ‘classic’ Spectra-
lism), it is a matter of helping the resurgence of an ‘inner power’. As a
medium that we do not pretend to control entirely, the orchestra appears
One day Eduard Hanslick remarked that if there could be an art ‘in as an ‘unstable dynamic system, and orchestral writing is not a simple tie
itself’ of instrumentation, all content aside, then, but only then, Berlioz’s that might retain all the acoustic, morphological or syntactical elements
Scherzo de la Reine Mab would constitute an absolute masterpiece. assembled as best can be’. Dufourt’s works thus appear as the slow dif-
What the critic ironically noted there indicates at the same time the ferentiation of an overall ‘structural sonority’ (to borrow a notion of La-
fantasy-producing that accompanied the blossoming of orchestral tim- chenmann’s), like a ‘texture, a web or frame that tears and repairs itself
bre in the 19th century: drawing everything from the sound, it was that without interrupting its movement of progression. However, the unity of
for which the Wagnerian ‘mystique’ of the ocean-orchestra strove. The tone preserves the work from dissolution.’ Here, harmonic objects are
rational extension of instrument-building (each section having to cover endlessly weighed, turned upside down, scrutinized, distended, slightly
the whole compass) then goes hand in hand with the systematic division distorted, filtered or spread out by the instrumentation, the boundary
of each instrumental colour (a clarinet is three instruments) and a ‘put- between chord and timbre finding itself blurred.
ting into a painting’ of timbres in which anything can be combined with The disquiet relation to orchestral matter also characterizes that to the
anything else: in Debussy’s Ibéria, the plucked strings ‘speak’ for the first pictorial universe. Just as nothing in Dufourt reminds us of a hedonistic
time with the tubular bells. colourism, his vision of the history of painting is that of the ‘progressive
One of the fundamental steps in this evolution in the 20th century — conquest of a subjective, inner space’. Yet this space is not one of sere-
after the return of a rather conventional view of orchestration as packa- nity: it includes its share of toil, extenuations, melancholy, and destruc-
ging of a structure with the Serialists — would be the Spectralism of the tive impulses. Thus, any cultural enjoyment of colour (and its univocal
1970s-80s, to which Hugues Dufourt will have given the name and de- transposition into music) is at the same time suspended: by the extreme
voted his earliest energies. The analysis of sound then made this appear violence of Lucifer, d’après Pollock; by the impossibility of a definitive
like a shifting, hilly landscape, like a complex microprocess: one then fusion in Voyage par-delà les fleuves et les monts.
draws from it the idea of a form that enlarges these processes; one takes In Pollock’s canvas (1947) Dufourt reads a psychodrama: ‘The techni-
inspiration from the fluctuations in the spectrum to compose perpetual ques used — running, spatters, spurts, rubbings, spots, drips, filaments,
mixings between harmonicity and inharmonicity, pure sound and noise; traces of fingers — create a shimmering, silvery light-matter, an entan-
one ‘re-synthesizes’ these objects with an infinitely broadened orches- glement of lines, an interlacing of mauve, green, lead grey. To tell the
tration. truth, the colour is indefinable, and here its muffled violence exposes
As for Dufourt, from spectral analysis he will have drawn the poetic the indecipherable movements of the psyche. Herein one discovers the
and technical vision of the orchestra as a ‘milieu’ or ‘environment’. On perpetuity of time, the gush of the present, the fright, the chaotic state
the subject of Lucifer, d’après Pollock (Lucifer According to Pollock), of contrary compulsions, shot through with intense discharges. Pollock
he remarks: ‘The symphony orchestra lends itself in a special way to reveals the language of the impulse to us.’ Musically, the danger is then
constructions of unprecedented phenomena such as interferences or ef- to give in to a rhetoric of violence, a pretentious symphonism that glori-
fects of depth. The orchestra is the field of choice for a type of production fies — like the famous film by Hans Namuth (1950), showing Pollock at
that is still to a degree synthetic, i.e., un-analyzable. […] Today, sympho- work — the pathos of the creator (man, always taming a docile, feminine
nic unity is that of an inner power that is deployed. Here, one talks about matter according to the ancient chauvinistic model put forward by Aris-
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totle). However, although the Dionysian unleashing is present, here it is the number of pitches, the distribution according to the stria of registers
plunged in darkness; we are in a volcanic world that takes up the figures (unfolded fan or settling), and the number of instruments doubling such
of menace in Surgir (1984); the sounds bite, the ground pitches. And and such a pitch and/or the dynamic allotted to each one. Here, the
what’s more, the very duration of this evolution is destabilizing since no third in fact makes a firm foundation because it is given to the double
longer does any narrative emerge from it: all the respites are perpetually basses, cellos, marimba, tuba and trombones; at the other extreme, the
troubled, pierced up to the end by the discharges. Nothing contains, in very high E flat comes out (piccolos, flutes playing with some effort), at
both senses of the term, an evolution in which we are lost; any recapi- the distance of a second from a C sharp in the first oboe (also in its most
tulation, any crowning is differed, and, at the very end, the music can strained register), the only instrument that plays it, like the bassoon’s
only be crushed by one last burst of violence, as is Salome in Strauss’s A…
opera. At 3’59 (bar 83), it is, on the contrary, a harshness in the brass and
winds; the foundation is weaker (low C in the trombones and tubas),
Voyage par-delà les fleuves et les monts (Journey beyond the Rivers the baritone register represented by a single pitch (an A flat, but played
and Mountains) proceeds differently. Regarding this painting by the by four instruments) whilst a cluster filling a fourth cracks in the upper
10th-century Chinese artist Fan K’uan, the composer says, among other register. At 8’02 (bar 187) it is a muffled combination of clarinets and
things: ‘We see an imposing rocky cliff tear itself from an abyss and trombones, a chord also ballasted upwards (a single F1 in the tuba), with
soar into the sky, like a sudden appearance of the inaccessible, over- an effect of waiting or expectation, almost of the dominant. Beginning
looking a jagged landscape that is further sharpened by the harsh, tor- at 14’49 (bars 336-339), three chords are slowly articulated like a sent
mented relief of the vegetation in the foreground. Vertically, the under- signal: a compact hotchpotch in the upper register (winds, horns and
growth of far-off forests seems to be clutching the peaks. On the right, a trumpets) with many frictions of seconds, immediately repeated but with
vertiginous waterfall cascading from the heights unfolds like a silk rib- the addition of a low B flat (double bass and bass trombone): as in the
bon. In the foreground, a group of rocks gives us a glimpse of a mule chords at the beginning of the Hostias in the Berlioz Requiem, where a
caravan, further down, of which the nearly imperceptible stroke hints at gaping abyss opens between the flutes and trombones in a vertiginous
the insignificance of Man before the immensity of Nature.’ anti-orchestration (depicting an unapproachable God), the second chord
The score lies in the wake of the orchestral cycle of Hivers (‘Winters’, suddenly makes felt that the first was advancing into the void so that the
1992-2001), characterized by a ‘vibratory state suspended in time’, ‘stai- third capsizes in a cloud of strings.
ned-glass sonorities’, the absence of ‘“voices”, “melodic” elements in To tell the truth, categories and words lack for describing these ef-
the traditional sense’ or ‘“themes” which would create identities that can fects, condensations from other planets, sublime, breathtaking objects
be spotted’. Contrary to the Luciferian sonorities, here Dufourt wants a that go beyond understanding; they mislead and overestimate our ear,
‘slow laceration of the fabric’ and ‘muffled stridencies’. which is perhaps still overly tonal. This is also true as concerns the form,
The latter crystallize into extremely strange ‘harmonic-timbric’ objects this ‘slow laceration of the fabric’ about which Dufourt spoke, ‘a conti-
— chords as if they were hoarse, spindly idols with feet of clay ready to nually reborn flux-form, striving towards a perpetual effort of integration
collapse or reaching the ear as if filtered, blurred, placed behind a fros- and condensation. The form is now no more than an obscure, negative
ted windowpane. Hence, at 2’10 (bar 46), where a chord of 11 pitches is power that merges with the rhythm and colour or the mass.’ Here we can
broadly unfolded over more than four octaves; the third of C-E provides go astray, like Fan K’uan’s minuscule travellers in the landscape; but in
a tonal foundation for fourths and seconds in tiers in the upper register; this music without themes, voices or melodies, the listener is nonethe-
the colour is warm with a certain Scriabinian languor and few beats / less borne by objects that serve as figures or images from a short while
mordents. But, to describe such objects, it would be necessary to cross ago. These are moments when the music repeats itself or withdraws into
9
itself. Certain textures return: a mixture of string glissandi, harsh and
sounding crushed, of multiphonics in the clarinets (e.g., at 4’50 or 7’36)
and trombone tenuti (‘with playing styles,’ says the composer, ‘that pro-
ject the trombones into the extreme low register and diffract the sound of
the clarinet in a trembling of multiphonics’). Another mixture even ser-
ves as a refrain: short slides in the strings, slow septuplets articulated in
the marimbas, timpani and double basses, and a calming C in the oboe,
repeated three times (at 4’05, 6’46, and at the very end).
Withdrawals occur when the ear can cling to simplification effects
that, in sum, come ahead of it. This is the case, for example, with this
perfect third at the beginning (E flat/G, at 0’25, horn and cellos), easily
apprehensible unison figures (at 11’46), or again, these striking moments
when a colour is largely spread out: the crotales, for example, appear
like a signal (at 11’), like an iridescence, with the winds and brass in the
upper register (at 16’05), like a clear, urgent call (at 20’44). Then there
are the temple blocks (beginning at 21’12) that are going to progressively
provide one of the layers of the last formal peak (at 24’08) that can be
spotted, in a paradoxical, taut aria that contrasts the consonances of the
wind instruments, the lyrical melody of the violins in the highest register,
and the compact mass of the temple blocks, as if one were joining the
voices of heaven, Man and earth, before the C of the oboe calls for the
new beginning of the cycle.
Fan K’uan:
Travelers among Mountains and Streams
10
THE PERFORMERS International, Holland, Strasbourg Musica, Oslo Ultima, Monte Carlo Le
Printemps des Arts, Nice Manca, Paris Ircam Agora, Radio-France Pré-
sences, Perth and Sydney festivals. In 2008, he participates to the 100th
Pierre-André Valade anniversary of Messiaen’s birth conducting works in London, Welling-
Pierre-André Valade was born in central France in 1959. In 1991 he co- ton, Basel and Hanoi.
founded the Paris based Ensemble Court-Circuit of which he was Music
Director for sixteen years until January 2008, before he was appointed Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg
chief conductor with the Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen in September The Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra was created in 1996, heir of
2009. He is especially well-known and admired for his performances of the RTL Symphonic Orchestra. While perpetuating its tradition it has ap-
repertoire from the 20th and 21st centuries, and receives regular invita- plied itself to stand out on the international scene thanks to its specifici-
tions from major festivals and orchestras in Europe, the USA, Canada, ties. Records have accompanied and highlighted this approach from the
Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Of his many recordings, Grisey’s Les beginning — through a choice of repertoire that is particularly daring —
Espaces Acoustiques has been singled out for particular praise and won notably thanks to the awards they have received, among which a 2002
both the Diapason d’or de l’année 1999 and the Grand Prix de l’Aca- ‘Cannes Classical Award’ for ‘Best Record of the Year’ for the recording
démie Charles Cros. His more recent recordings include works by Hu- of Pierné’s Cydalise et le chèvre-pied. The press thereby unanimously
gues Dufourt (also given a Diapason d’Or of the Year 2008, as well as a praised the action of the Orchestra in favor of contemporary music, ma-
«Choc» du Monde de la Musique), and on Deutsche Grammophon Har- terialized through the ongoing complete works devoted to Ohana and
rison Birtwistle’s Theseus Game, a piece he premiered in Duisburg and Xenakis, or monographs of works by Klaus Huber, Ivo Malec, Hugues
conducted at the South Bank, BBC Proms, Huddersfield Contemporary Dufourt or Sylvano Bussotti.
Music Festival, Lucerne International Festival and in Berlin. Highlights But the Orchestra has also diversified its activity by recording ope-
from his recent or future appearances include a concert with the Tokyo ras (Le Pays by Ropartz, Polyphème by Jean Cras, Sophie Arnould by
Philharmonic in August 2008 which was singled out as one of the three Pierné), and by producing chamber music records with its soloists (Mar-
best concerts of the year in Japan. In 2008 he has received again the tinu, Le Flem, Cras, Pierné, d’Indy). Fomerly under the successive direc-
Grand-Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros, this time under the category tion of David Shallon and Bramwell Tovey, the Orchestra has appoin-
‘conductor’, for his achievements in three recent recordings. He made ted Emmanuel Krivine as a conductor, which confirms its international
his BBC Proms debut in 2001, and has appeared at the Aldeburgh, Bath reputation.
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© Timpani