Cantates

Concert

Fri 17 June 2022,
8:30 p.m.
Cité de la musique, Salle des concerts
Access plan
Concert recorded by France Musique

Content:
"By art, I mean the faculty of expressing a thought in the clearest, simplest form, that is to say, the most "intelligible". Webern addressed his profession of faith to his friend, the poet Hildegarde Jone, whom he set to music in his two cantatas. These final and majestic works, very rarely performed because of the number of musicians required, are the epitome of Webern's art, combining canon techniques and symmetries, dodecaphonic and antiphonal writing, references to 16th-century polyphony, fugue and lied, with the fabulous inventiveness of timbres and perspectives. The second Cantata is comparable to a Missa Brevis, leading to a form of "assumption". And when Webern orchestrates the six-part Ricercar of Bach's Musical Offering, the ghostly presence of the past is even more explicit. It is also a mirror construction that Philippe Manoury adopts in his Passacaglia for Tokyo. "A mise en abîme that echoes in multiple images an initial drawing" according to the composer. Echoing explicitly his great elder of the Second Viennese School, Johannes Maria Staud returns to Paris with his new creation meeting the modernist poetry of the American William Carlos Williams. Sophia Burgos soprano Hanno Müller-Brachmann bass Jean-Christophe Vervoitte bass Hidéki Nagano horn Ensemble intercontemporain Orchestre de chambre de Paris Ensemble Aedes Matthias Pintscher conductor Mathieu Romano choir director Dionysios Papanicolaou IRCAM electronics Johannes Bach / Anton Webern Fuga (Ricercata), excerpt from L’Offrande musicale Anton Webern Cantate n°1, op. 29 ; Cantate n°2, op. 31 Johannes Maria Staud Once Anything Might Have Happened - Premiere 2022 Commissioned by IRCAM-Centre Pompidou and the Ensemble intercontemporain Philippe Manoury Passacaille pour Tokyo

"By art, I mean the faculty of expressing a thought in the clearest, simplest form, that is to say, the most "intelligible". Webern addressed his profession of faith to his friend, the poet Hildegarde Jone, whom he set to music in his two cantatas. These final and majestic works, very rarely performed because of the number of musicians required, are the epitome of Webern's art, combining canon techniques and symmetries, dodecaphonic and antiphonal writing, references to 16th-century polyphony, fugue and lied, with the fabulous inventiveness of timbres and perspectives. The second Cantata is comparable to a Missa Brevis, leading to a form of "assumption". And when Webern orchestrates the six-part Ricercar of Bach's Musical Offering, the ghostly presence of the past is even more explicit. It is also a mirror construction that Philippe Manoury adopts in his Passacaglia for Tokyo. "A mise en abîme that echoes in multiple images an initial drawing" according to the composer. Echoing explicitly his great elder of the Second Viennese School, Johannes Maria Staud returns to Paris with his new creation meeting the modernist poetry of the American William Carlos Williams.

Sophia Burgos soprano
Hanno Müller-Brachmann bass
Jean-Christophe Vervoitte bass
Hidéki Nagano horn
Ensemble intercontemporain
Orchestre de chambre de Paris
Ensemble Aedes
Matthias Pintscher conductor
Mathieu Romano choir director
Dionysios Papanicolaou IRCAM electronics

Johannes Bach / Anton Webern Fuga (Ricercata), excerpt from L’Offrande musicale
Anton Webern Cantate n°1, op. 29 ; Cantate n°2, op. 31
Johannes Maria Staud Once Anything Might Have Happened - Premiere 2022
Commissioned by IRCAM-Centre Pompidou and the Ensemble intercontemporain
Philippe Manoury Passacaille pour Tokyo

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Coproduction IRCAM-Centre Pompidou, Philharmonie de Paris, Ensemble intercontemporain, Orchestre de chambre de Paris.

https://philharmoniedeparis.fr

"Cantates" concert playlist

L'offrande musicale by Jean-Sébastien Bach and Anton Webern (recorded at the Maison de Radio France, 1995)
Passacaille pour Tokyo by Philippe Manoury (recorded at the Cité de la musique, 2012)