© Stefano Corso LUCIA RONCHETTI (*1963) Ensemble Intercontemporain Orchestra Della Toscana
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© Stefano Corso LUCIA RONCHETTI (*1963) Ensemble intercontemporain Orchestra della Toscana Sophie Cherrier fl u t e Fabio Fabbrizzi fl u t e Emmanuelle Ophèle bassfl ute Alessio Galiazzo oboe 1 (2013) 5 (2015) Le Palais du silence Rumori da monumenti Jérôme Comte clarinet Marco Ortolani, Alfredo Vena clarinet Drammaturgia after Claude Debussy A study of Johannesburg for recorded voice and Alain Billard bass clarinet Umberto Codecà bassoon for ensemble 11:54 chamber orchestra (new version), text by Jens McManama horn Paolo Faggi horn Ivan Vladislavic (based on fragments Jean-Christophe Vervoitte horn Donato De Sena, 2 Helicopters and butterfl ies (2012) from “Portrait with Keys”) 18:06 Clément Saunier trumpet Guido Guidarelli trumpet solo for an operatic percussionist based Jean-Lacques Gaudon trumpet Giorgio Bornacina trombone on “The Gambler” by Fyodor Dostoevsky 16:05 Jérôme Naulais trombone Morgan Tortelli, Gilles Durot percussion Tommaso Ferrieri Caputi percussion 3 Forward and downward, Ensemble intercontemporain Samuel Favre percussion Andrea Tacchi, Daniele Giorgi, turning neither to the left nor Matthias Pintscher conductor Victor Hanna percussion Chiara Morandi, Paolo Gaiani violin to the right, for solo cello (2017) Jeanne-Marie Conquer violin Stefano Zanobini, Caterina Cioli viola Action concert piece after Christian Dierstein percussionist Hae-Sun Kang violin Luca Provenzani, Plutarch and Kàroly Kerényi for Michele Marco Rossi cellist Odile Auboin viola Augusto Gasbarri, Stefano Battistini, solo cellist, New version arranged by Grégoire Simon viola Giovanni Simeone violoncello Michele Marco Rossi 18:51 Orchestra della Toscana Pierre Strauch violoncello Amerigo Bernardi, Luca Pfaff conductor Nicolas Crosse doublebass Luigi Giannoni doublebass 4 Lacus timoris (2015) Drammaturgia for solo timpani 10:06 TT 75:03 Matthias Pintscher conductor Luca Pfaff conductor 1 Commissioned by Festival d’Automne à Paris and Recording venues: 1 Cité de la musique, 2 4 Ensemblehaus Freiburg, 3 Abbey Rocchi Studio, 5 Teatro Verdi Ensemble intercontemporain Recording dates: 1 8 Nov 2013, 2 4 5 Nov 2016, 3 11 Feb 2017, 5 25 Sep 2015 4 Commissioned by Nationaltheater Mannheim Sound director: 1 Philippe Cabon 5 Commissioned by Orchestra della Toscana Sound engineers: 1 Olivia Branger, Julien Bourdais, Alexandre Martin Recording engineers: 1 Sylvain Leconte, 2 4 Reinhold Braig, 3 Tommaso Cancellieri, 5 Marco Capaccioni Final CD-Mastering: Christoph Amann Executive producer: 1 Jean-Claude Mullet Recording supervisor: 1 Elsa Biston Publishers: 1 Edizione musicali Rai Trade, 2 4 Edizioni musicali Rai Trade (RTC 4318), 3 Rai Production: Andreas Karl Booklet editor: Eva Hausegger Graphic Design: Alexander Kremmers (paladino media), cover based on artwork by Enrique Fuentes (Centralizacion 2, 2011) 2 3 action music pieces Silent Landscapes the piano, almost always appear cloaked in the instru- tire despised family and cut them down to size, after by Roman Reeger mental tone colours of the ensemble until Cloches à which she proceeds to gamble away her entire fortune For the drammaturgia Le Palais du silence, commis- travers les feuilles [“Bells Through the Leaves”] makes herself at the roulette table. For Lucia Ronchetti, “the sioned and premièred in 2013 by Ensemble inter- its first appearance in the piano part shortly before rhythm of The Gambler” is characterised by a “com- contemporain under the baton of Matthias Pintscher, the piece concludes. In Ronchetti’s score, Debussy’s plex accelerando shaping events that lead inexora- Ronchetti chose a setup featuring an uncovered grand composed pictures of abandoned landscapes take on bly to a tragic conclusion”. She therefore places key piano ensconced in two semi-circular rows of instru- a certain presence in their ephemerality. They are akin roulette table scenes in the focus of this “micro mu- mentalists. This work’s title refers to an unrealised bal- to imaginary, silhouette-like shapes that appear and sic theatre” project for one solo percussionist. The so- let project of Claude Debussy from 1914. Starting from quickly disappear like the final words of an actor on a loist represents various characters in the novel, above the “absence” of Debussy’s unwritten score, Ronchetti theatre stage. Le Palais du silence thus sees Ronchetti all the central figure of Alexei as well as the family ma- For over 20 years now, music theatre has been a focus refers to the attempts he made elsewhere to transfer reflect on the processual nature of composing using triarch, lending them voices using selected passag- in the compositional work and explorations of Lucia “silent landscapes” to sound; landscapes that, as aban- the example of Debussy (on whose music she wrote es from the text. The text’s dramatization unites with Ronchetti, who was born in Rome in 1963. Along- doned places, render the absence of those persons her dissertation) while also providing her listener with the composed scenery, which takes on concrete form side her numerous, formally quite diverse chamber who may once have passed through them percepti- an impressive demonstration of the phenomenon of via the percussion instruments’ spatial arrangement: operas and the “grand” opera Esame di mezzanotte, ble, rather like footprints in an otherwise untouched musical absence. the lonely hotel room inhabited by the player is im- Ronchetti’s oeuvre has also seen the crystallisation snowy landscape. The centrally placed, uncovered pi- plied by hanging found objects (old wooden chests, of several additional, genre-blurring categories of ano makes clear Debussy’s simultaneous presence The Exhilaration of the Game an old spring mattress, a sink, wooden boards, scraps music theatre: choral operas, action concert pieces, and absence. And it is in this “laboratory of Debussy”, of wallpaper, etc.). The scenery’s vertical arrangement, soundtracks, and radio plays. All of these have in com- as Ronchetti puts it, that the lowest notes originate, Helicopters and butterflies (2012) is one of Ronchetti’s on the other hand, shows how Ronchetti’s composi- mon the presence of a theatrical idea that need not rising upward through the registers as they are tak- action concert pieces – music theatre miniatures, writ- tional structure is by no means geared solely to de- adhere to a classical narrative programme, instead en over and worked with by the ensembles’ instru- ten for smaller ensembles or sometimes even solo- scribing the original text. The percussionist performs manifesting a “scenic” formal character in the sense of ments. Right at the beginning, three percussionists ists, that exhibit a situational and concrete character on three spatial levels: on the lowest one with tap the literal translation of the ancient Greek word skené beat a sextuplet-figure on the bottom edge of the pia- frequently inspired by literary models. The dynamic dancing shoes tapping against the marble, stone, (hut, tent), before the backdrop of which gestures and no’s frame, a figure that can soon be recognised as the and compositional disposition of Helicopters and but- and wooden floor elements, on the middle one using images can be seen and have their effect as such. It is main motif from Debussy’s Le vent dans la plaine from terflies refers to Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “The Gambler” the contents of the “hotel room” and a dulcimer for just such a “stage beyond the stage” that serves as the his first book of Préludes, an illustration of Debussy’s (1867). This strongly autobiographical novel – which self-accompanied singing of Russian folk songs (after performative locus of those works to which Ronchetti compositional search for new sounds. The relation- Dostoyevsky wrote in just 26 days – tells the story of Igor Stravinsky), and on the upper level with the rou- gives the label “drammaturgia”: experiments that ship between sound and silence is manifested again first-person narrator Alexei Ivanovich, the destitute lette wheel placed at its centre and played upon with straddle the border between music theatre and in- later on in the piece in the form of quoted passag- private tutor of a bankrupt Russian general who be- gambling chips, 10- and 20-cent euro coins, and a mar- strumental music, “concentrated scenes” that acous- es from Debussy’s Des pas sur la neige [“Footprints in gins playing roulette out of love for the general’s step- ble ball. These three levels work together to symbol- tically evoke spaces, atmospheres, and figures. Not the Snow”], La Cathédrale engloutie [“The Submerged daughter Polina and soon develops a gambling addic- ise the existential vertical tension in the main char- infrequently, these “scenes in sound” are associated Cathedral”], Le vent dans la plaine [“The wind over tion. The bankrupt general, for his part, hopes for the acter, who is trapped between loneliness, the reality with the spatial arrangement and semantic attribu- the plains”], and Jardins sous la pluie [“Garden in the death of his aunt, from whom he expects to inherit of the hotel room, and the hopes and dreams that he tions of the individual instruments as well as with the Rain”] – all of these piano works that, except for the ba- money. She, however, appears suddenly in the middle associates with the roulette wheel. The percussionist “roles” of their players. sic impulses touched off by the percussionists hitting of the novel to expose the ignoble character of her en- thus becomes a stage performer in Ronchetti’s score, 4 5 transforming the concert situation into an audio dra- this with musical items, we ended up with ap- ma laced with an abundance of atmospheric details: proximately 80 things to use. Lucia proceed- Helicopters and butterflies the hypnotic rolling of the ball (represented by a mar- ed writing the score, and I attempted to learn ble ball moving inside a steel drum), flowing water tap dancing, as I was supposed to recreate a sounds, a tap dancing solo (in the manner of Fred solo of Fred Astaire. Realistically, learning this Astaire), and much more.