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Bechara EL-KHOURY Orages Espaces-Fragmentations • Poème nocturne • Le Chant d’amour Ariane Douguet, Soprano • Vicens Prats, Flute Orchestre de Paris • Paavo Järvi • Eivind Gullberg Jensen Orchestre National de France • Daniele Gatti Orchestre Colonne • David Coleman WORLD PREMIÈRE LIVE RECORDINGS Bechara El-Khoury (b. 1957) storm in a moment of precarious calm”. The work is made The contemplative first section, the longest of the Orages • Espaces-Fragmentations • Poème nocturne • Le Chant d’amour up of very short units of sound that give this impression of three, is lyrical and restrained throughout, its smooth flashes, with an orchestration that continually bends and surface gently disturbed towards the end by music lighter Commissioned by the Orchestre de Paris, Orages interval) will thereafter be subject to multiple shatters to fill the sound space. The opening is and airier in feel, before a return to the initial meditative (Storms) was written in 2013 and first performed at the transformations, derivations, distortions, amplifications or characteristic, unveiling the key materials that will be atmosphere. Salle Pleyel, conducted by Paavo Järvi, on 11 September condensations and inversions, particularly once the brass transformed and combined throughout the rest of the The central section, for the orchestra alone, is an 2013, as part of the orchestra’s season-opening concert. have made their first entry. The motif is later heard on the work. We then hear a mysterious passage of static astonishing piece of writing, a kind of crossroads between While world events such as the First Lebanese War trombones, in a very tight canon, beneath a rhythmic harmonies, out of which burst aerial flute figures, a new past and future in terms of the stylistic means employed (Les Ruines de Beyrouth, Le Liban en flammes, Requiem, ostinato on a single chord played by the trumpets. The harmonic construction in dynamic progression, dense by the composer. Numerous elements clash together in a Naxos 8.557043 / 8.557691), 9/11 (New York Tears and storm briefly abates before a new atmosphere establishes brass clashes, and an urgent cry from the high strings. short space of time: a tormented theme on brass and low Hope, Naxos 8.570134) and the Shoah (War Concerto) itself, with alternating flashes on brass and on woodwind, Shortly after this, the timpani play an obsessive nine- strings, horn glissandi and fanfares, violent, harrowing have in the past inspired El-Khoury to reflect and meditate and a whirling ostinato in the violins. crotchet rhythmic motif which, after a four-note melodic two-semiquaver blows for woodwind, horns and low on the human condition, several of his more recent works The only truly calm moment in the work, marked figure on horns and trumpet, takes on different, variously strings (and reused in Espaces-Fragmentations), four- (Autumn Pictures, The Dark Mountain, Naxos 8.572773) Lumineux, is made up of perfect chords with an Ivesian fragmented, forms before turning into an ominous motif note calls for the brass. reveal the influence on his musical inspiration of cosmic resonance (The Unanswered Question!). Later, a also present in the orchestral cadenza of Poème Later we hear, among other things, the four-note landscape and the natural world. new, lyrical five-note motif, drawn from a whole-tone nocturne. symmetrical motif recycled, unchanged, in a similar Recalling his youth in Lebanon, the composer has scale, appears eight times (like an echo of the Fifth Act of El-Khoury’s Poème nocturne, Op. 80 for flute and construction in Orages, strident soaring blasts on the spoken of how he loved “the storms that broke at the end of Pelléas!). orchestra (2009), another commission from the Orchestre flutes, and polyrhythmic textures over the kind of static the day, when the light was sinking into anarchy”, so loud With a sudden, dramatic intensification – in the style de Paris, was written to mark the tenth anniversary of the harmonies heard in Lutte, the fourth movement of Les that he could no longer hear the piano properly as he played. of Penderecki – in the bass tones with strings polarised death of the immensely talented and internationally Fleuves engloutis (2001; Naxos 8.570134), as well as in Rather than the kind of physical, programmatic on F and then A flat, there begins a remarkable four- renowned French flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal. the much later Orages. descriptions we find in works by Beethoven, Berlioz or phase episode, introduced each time by a woodwind Cast in a single movement divided into three The third section marks a return to the mysterious and Richard Strauss, El-Khoury’s music here conveys a grouping, through which the brass can be heard in triadic sections, the work is unusual in that it reverses the lyrical atmosphere of the first, borrowing its materials, from momentary impression of the moods and atmospheres harmony above dissonant string tremolos, ultimately traditional rôles of soloist and orchestra – the cadenza is which, finally, there emanates a subtle oriental fragrance. created by such chaotic natural phenomena, and of their leading to a huge section for brass derived from the given to the latter, rather than to the virtuoso instrumentalist. The text of Le Chant d’amour, Op. 44, a lyric poem for psychological effect on people – the fear and sensory principal motif. According to the composer, this dramatic orchestral soprano and orchestra, is drawn from the twenty-fourth of deprivation that storms can engender in us. Espaces-Fragmentations (2011) is the product of an cadenza “represents the image of a mountain rising in the Lamartine’s Méditations poétiques. In setting this “The terrifying rumbling became a symphony of unusual commission. In the context of a complete middle of a plain, an infinite plain, on which poetic images Romantic poem, El-Khoury employs a post-Romantic destruction, and the crazed flashes of lightning told the Beethoven symphony cycle given by the Orchestre mingle with dreams and daydreams in space, time and style at times reminiscent of Richard Strauss, a composer story of the earth’s journey towards the unknown, towards National de France and Daniele Gatti, Radio France silence…” he greatly admires, as witness his recent seventh silence… I was a non-existent being in a majestic combat asked five composers each to write a work of about ten The flute, which only plays in the slow outer sections, symphonic poem Elektra ‘Hommage à Richard Strauss’. pitting the elements against the darkness!” minutes’ duration that would use the same instrumentation is the bearer of dreams, mystery, contemplation and Composed in Paris in May 1987, Le Chant d’amour has a The “anarchy” and random nature of a storm are as one of the Beethoven symphonies on the same meditation – this is the nocturnal aspect of the tribute. The lyrical expressiveness akin to that of the Méditation portrayed in non-narrative fashion, using contrasting programme. This work was performed between the cadenza symbolises Rampal, the admired soloist and poétique for violin and orchestra, Op. 41 (Naxos musical materials, constantly worked and distorted in Second and the Pastoral. world-class artist, its dramatic nature reflecting the grief 8.557692). subtle fashion, arranged in a pattern outside conventional Speaking about Espaces-Fragmentations, El-Khoury caused by the recollection of his death. In a spirit of The music is here conventionally arranged around formal processes of construction. has called it “the translation of a reflection on time – past, universalisation, El-Khoury creates a link between his the three strophes of the sung text, the orchestra A few landmarks to listen out for… A trumpet call present and future…”. He sees a cosmic dimension of tribute to Rampal, a European musician, and the cultures providing a prelude, two interludes and a postlude. harmonised with clusters, then sinister tremolo chords “fragmented spaces, lost in the night sky, like long-dead of the Near East, explaining that the work “takes flight The orchestral introduction opens with an introduce an expressive, four-note principal motif in the stars whose light has only just reached our eyes”. The beneath the clouds of Europe and ends its journey in a impassioned, lively motif on close-knit strings, alternated low strings. Its symmetrical structure (two minor seconds, work’s poetic vision is that of “a strange journey into night sunlit eastern port, the origin of so many memories and twice with an expressive descending phrase on violins rising and falling respectively, separated by a wide that crosses our world like a flash of lightning heralding a eras across the centuries…” and flutes. Then the voice enters, at first reticent, then blossoming into lyricism to the point of wonder; the oboe strings, introduces an ascent symbolising estrangement, la terre vers l’inconnu et le silence… J’étais un être Radio France avait demandé à cinq compositeurs d’écrire provides a brief bridge, derived from the first motif, which flight and fragility, emphasised by chromatic writing. inexistant dans le combat grandiose qui opposait les une œuvre d’une dizaine de minutes en relation avec la leads to a rhapsodic passage of static harmonies. The second interlude begins in the strings with éléments aux ténèbres ! » nomenclature orchestrale des symphonies jouées au The first interlude explodes in a brass-dominated parallel triadic harmonies that call to mind Sibelius; a L’ « anarchie » et le caractère aléatoire du cours du programme. L’œuvre fut entendue entre la orchestra, then we hear a sumptuous tutti which ends, trumpet phrase then emerges which is picked up by the phénomène naturel sont rendus de manière non Seconde Symphonie et la Symphonie « Pastorale ». after a horn glissando, in a passage of lyrical string clarinets, then the violins. Static or parallel harmonies narrative, au moyen de matériaux musicaux contrastés, Au sujet de cette œuvre, le compositeur déclare writing.