Marc Eychenne: Sextuor, 1st mvt
André Caplet: Légende
Madeleine Isaksson: inné (for 9 instruments)
Heitor Villa-Lobos: Choros Nr. 7
Bohuslav Martinu: Nonet Nr. 2
The 20th century offers an incomprehensible richness of musical styles that were influenced by drastic historic events and different approaches to dealing with it. Of course, it is not possible to give a nearly complete image of the musical landscape of this very moved century. However, the works performed stand for very different ways how composers integrate their own history and backgrounds – cultural and personal – into the music. We want to invite you to put yourself in the situation of the composer which can be, in some cases easier than it sounds. They were moved and touched by happy events, like Madeleine Isaksson, who was pregnant with her first son when she wrote “Inné”, as well as tragedies, like Bohuslav Martinu, who suffered from a late stage of cancer and fell prey to his illness shortly after he wrote the last notes of his nonet. Their music is the crystallized result of such impressions.
The culture of wind instrument music is a key element in French music. It’s not just because of this fact that the Sextuor by Marc Eychenne can be called “typically French”. The virtuoso, humoristic, sometimes melancholic, yet always eye-blinking elements shaping Eychennes work, perfectly fit into the French tradition. The unusual about this piece is the setting of a ordinary woodwind quintet with a saxophone. Also Caplet’s “Legende” uses the colours of the saxophone, an in classical music still quite seldomly used instrument. He and other prominent French composers were asked to write a work including a saxophone by a rich, Francophile Lady from Boston, who was prescribed to take up a wind instrument by her doctor in order to improve her health. As a result, she asked numerous French composers, Debussy i.a. to write music for her.
Tradition, also in a sense of respecting one’s own cultural and music heritage made many composers look into their folkloristic roots for inspiration: Heitor Villa-Lobos’ music is full of traditional Brazilian music – he quotes, he imitates, he processes. But, as his biggest musical model was Johann Sebastian Bach, he always looks over the Atlantic to take European traditions and shape his own very unique language. Bohuslav Martinu’s work is rooted in the traditions of his home country Bohemia as well. His very personal style of composing is a mix of his musical heritage, the impact of the European modernists like Debussy and Stravinsky and his own genius. Influences of these composers can be still heard in the late Nonet.
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