FRANCK BEDROSSIAN Twist Edges Epigram Duo Links Donatienne Michel-Dansac Klangforum Wien . Emilio Pomàrico SWR Symphonieorchester . Alejo Pérez IRCAM – Centre Pompidou 1999 20 YEARS 2019 © Philippe Gontier FRANCK BEDROSSIAN (*1971) 1 Twist for orchestra and electronics (2016) 10:09 2 Edges for piano and percussion (2010) 10:10 dedicated to Laurent and Rémi Durupt Epigram (2010 – 2018) after texts by Emily Dickinson for soprano and 11 instruments 3 I 13:49 dedicated to Donatienne Michel-Dansac 4 II 08:39 dedicated to Françoise and Jean-Philippe Billarant 5 III 13:05 dedicated to Annie Clair TT 56:08 1 SWR Symphonieorchester 2 Duo Links Alejo Pérez, conductor Laurent Durupt, piano IRCAM – Centre Pompidou Rémi Durupt, percussion Robin Meier, computer music designer Luca Bagnoli, sound engineer 3 4 5 Donatienne Michel-Dansac, soprano Klangforum Wien Emilio Pomàrico, conductor 3 4 Epigram I 288 255 290 I’m nobody! Who are you? To die – takes just a little while – Of Bronze – and Blaze – Are you nobody, too? They say it doesn’t hurt – The North – Tonight – Then there’s a pair of us – don’t tell! It’s only fainter – by degrees – So adequate – it forms – They’d banish us, you know. And then – it’s out of sight – So preceoncerted to itself – So distant – to alarms – How dreary to be somebody! A darker Ribbon – for a Day – And Unconcern so sovereign How public, like a frog A Crape upon the Hat – To Universe, or me To tell your name the livelong day And then the pretty sunshine comes – Infects my simple spirit To an admiring bog! And helps us to forget With Taints of Majesty – Till I take vaster attitudes – The absent – mystic – creature – And strut upon my stem – 1695 That but for love of us – Disdaining Men, and Oxygen, Had gone to sleep – that soundest For Arrogance of them – There is a solitude of space time – A solitude of sea Without the weariness – My splendors, are Menagerie – A solitude of death, but these But their competeless Show Society shall be Will entertain the centuries Compared with that profounder site When I, am long ago, That polar privacy An Islandin dishonored Grass – A soul admitted to itself – Whom none but Beetles – know. Finite Infinity 5 Epigram II 297 470 It’s like the Light – I am alive – I guess – I am alive – because A fashionless Delight – The Branches on my Hand I do not own a House – It’s like the Bee – Are full of Morning Glory – Entitled to myself – precise – A dateless – Melody – And at my finger’s end – And fitting no one else – It’s like the Woods – The Carmine – tingles warm – And marked my Girlhood’s name – Private – Like the Breeze – And if I hold a Glass So Visitors may know Phraseless – yet it stirs Across my Mouth – it blurs it – Which Door is mine – and not mistake The proudest Trees – Physician’s – proof of Breath – – And try another Key – It’s like the Morning – I am alive – because Best – when it’s done – I am not in a Room – How good – to be alive! And the Everlasting Clocks – The Parlor – Commonly – it is – How infinite – to be Chime – Noon! So Visitors may come – Alive – two-fold – The Birth I had – And this – besides, in – Thee! And lean – and view it sidewise – And add “How cold – it grew” – And “Was it conscious – when it stepped In Immortality?” 6 Epigram III 388 871 1604 Take your Heaven further on – The Sun and Moon must make their We send the Wave to find the Wave — This – to Heaven divine Has gone – haste— An Errand so divine, Had You earlier blundered in The Stars express around The Messenger enamored too, Possibly, e’en You had seen For in the Zones of Paradise Forgetting to return, An Eternity – put on – The Lord alone is burned— We make the wise distinction still, Now – to ring a Door beyond Soever made in vain, Is the utmost of Your Hand – His Eye, it is the East and West— The sagest time to dam the sea is To the Skies – apologize – The North and South when He when the sea is gone — Nearer to Your Courtesies Do concentrate His Countenance Than this Sufferer polite – Like Glow Worms, flee away— Dressed to meet You – See – in White! Oh Poor and Far— Oh Hindred Eye That hunted for the Day— The Lord a Candle entertains Entirely for Thee— 7 1606 1632 Quite empty, quite at rest, So give me back to Death — The Robin locks her Nest, The Death I never feared and tries her Wings. Except that it deprived of thee — She does not know a Route And now, by Life deprived, But puts her Craft about In my own Grave I breathe For rumored Springs — And estimate its size — She does not ask for Noon — Its size is all that Hell can guess — She does not ask for Boon, And all that Heaven was — Crumbless and homeless, of but one request — The Birds she lost — Emily Dickinson 8 Take Your Heaven me that it has slightly vanished, but is Further On still relevant to distinguish this group of French composers (which would have to include Yann Robin) from oth- The Music of Franck er new developments during the first years of the young millennium, includ- Bedrossian ing conceptual music, discoursal com- positions and multimedia experiments, with which they seem to only share a certain discomfort regarding the final- ly historical New Music. Without any warning, sound attacks Instead of targeting the music indus- the ear and ends its inertia. “Violent, try or technology, Bedrossian and his savage” is the marking for the first colleagues insist on basic musicali- few bars of the orchestra piece Twist, ty, originating from music itself and which is by no means an exaggeration. what it generates from sound. This Sforzasforzatissimo – the music re- can be seen in the concept of satura- sembles a roaring beast – or a storm tion, which seems a bit strange in En- forcing its way over water – or break- glish. “Musique saturée”: This could be ing glass. The sound triggers associa- translated as saturated, over-saturat- tions with something that immediately ed music, which does not seem partic- withdraws from this attempt, because ularly fitting, since we are most likely it is the sound itself – and not the as- to use this expression in German col- sociation – that forms the action, gains loquialized language in the context of momentum and culminates in exces- the “saturated citizens of prosperity” sive movement. The beginning is an who are doing well and who are well exemplary case of “musique saturée”. off. “The saturated has only limited in- Suddenly, this term existed, abrupt terest in creativity, spontaneity or com- like the music itself. I first encoun- mitment and is hardly able to do so”, tered the works of Franck Bedrossian the Wikipedia states. This is not meant and Raphaël Cendo in Donaueschin- at all in the case of “musique saturée”. gen in 2009, when this definition was Rather, the sound here is enriched, still very fresh. Meanwhile, it seems to highly enriched to explosiveness. 9 Sound and noise merge, gestures are was an inventory, but such manifes- Excess became central and novel: in- transformed into statics and vice ver- tos outdate themselves. The music stead of transparency and reduction, sa. And the energetic intensity sud- escapes the self-created terminolo- which has long been a sound ide- denly gains poetic power. gy, in a fortunate way, if you keep the al, now addition, excess. In an intui- energy and power and do not hide be- tive way, he creates complex sounds Franck Bedrossian likes the term “sat- hind conventions. Bedrossian‘s music, through accumulation. A sound is re- uration”, because, on one hand, it em- in any case, has expanded since then, charged in such a way that it no longer phasizes the excessive. These com- exploring and conquering new qual- aims in a clear direction but becomes plex sounds relate to an excess of ities without losing its original power. multidimensional and explodes in dif- energy, which in turn triggers a musi- On the contrary, it tends to intensify. ferent directions due to its ambiguity. cal drama. On the other hand, the term Certainly, he also knows the desire to refers to the visual arts and colour: He As is so often the case in music history, use pure sounds, to build hierarchies knows the very French need to form it was a matter of re-creating a stron- and to recognize clear structures. At harmonious colours starting from (and ger connection to the sound itself, the same time, he likes to not serve not based on) complex sounds. That of removing it from its consumption, this desire and even to deconstruct is a different way of hearing. These from within. It is significant in which the hierarchies: noise destroys these sounds can be superimposed in a genealogy the “musique saturée” ap- parameters – which Boulez once criti- condensed, quasi-chord-like way, or pears. Bedrossian studied with Allain cized about them. in a polyphonic way, depending on the Gaussin, then with Gérard Grisey (just situation. He works a little like a sculp- before his sudden death) and Mar- The resulting ambiguity is part of his tor who lays layers on top of each oth- co Stroppa. At IRCAM, he was taught credo: an unascertained sound lan- er and thereby creates something that by Philippe Leroux, Tristan Murail and guage grown from intuition, wild poet- cannot be reduced or taken apart by Philippe Manoury.