Claude Vivier Clara Iannotta
© Claude Vivier au Centre culturel Canadien à Paris, 1982 © Courtesy Fondation Vivier – photo Daniel Dion ©
Clara Iannotta: paw-marks in wet cement (ii) for piano*, 2 percussionists and amplified ensemble
Claude Vivier: Pulau Dewata for ensemble; Bouchara for soprano and ensemble; Shiraz for piano
Marion Tassou, soprano
Wilhem Latchoumia, piano*
Ensemble L’Instant Donné
Aurélien Azan-Zielinski, conductor
Production: Théâtre de la Ville-Paris; Festival d’Automne à Paris
With support from the Ernst von Siemens Foundation for Music
With support from the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris
With support from SACEM
Concert recorded by France Musique (Radio France).
“There is no way of seeing the future of music without the key contribution made by other cultures. The human mind can only be cosmic when engaging its entire cultural heritage.” [Claude Vivier] In the compositions of both Claude Vivier and Clara Iannotta, each moment contains a hybrid element where the other party, an outsider or soloist, conveys the full force of their discovery.
The compositions Paramaribo and Samarkand, Bouchara and Shiraz are some of Vivier’s works on great cities of the past. Samarkand, for the city in Uzbekistan on the Silk Road, is a melancholy love song for soprano and ensemble, with words from a fictitious language. The city of Shiraz in Iran, a rough hewn diamond, inspired one of his most famous works where the pianist’s hands move in ways that recall the blind singers in the old souk in Shiraz.
In the same concert is the French première of paw-marks in wet cement (ii) by Clara Iannotta. Here is a new approach to the concerto where the composer so “dreads” the piano that she has had to strip away the instrument’s historic legacy to focus solely on the acoustic elements: holding a sound, transforming it through playing or resonance, and ultimately having the ensemble embrace the role of soloist.
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Running time: 1h10 plus intermission
See also
Clara Iannotta, Chris Swithinbank I listen to the inward through my bones
Clara Iannotta's project is to listen to the city and its various life-forms, in a space, that of a church, which a priori preserves those inside from the noises outside. She does so by means of an electronic installation designed for the acoustics of the Church of Saint-Eustache, a building with a rich musical tradition, ranging from from Rameau to Berlioz.
Clara Iannotta echo from afar (II) ; They left us grief-trees wailing at the wall ; glass and stone ; a stir among the stars, a making way
What are the relationships between a spider's growth, the sound experience of radiotherapy and the lights and clicking sounds of old-fashioned slide viewers? The work of Clara Iannotta, of which this concert offers a journey through its recent years, is a mode of self-knowledge, or an autobiography in which sound and body are intimately linked.
Clara Iannotta, Dmitri Chostakovich, Franz Schubert
Spanning three centuries, these three works speak of self-care, the incessant quest for new languages, crisis and renewal, and the inherent element of wandering in our lives. And of the landscape in which each point, equidistant from the centre, reveals itself to a traveller who moves around there without moving forward.