2024-07-08 17:00:00
“Un Treasure… A Rarity! » When Lionel Sow talks about the piece by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) which will be created at the new Radio France Occitanie festival which starts on July 8, superlatives multiply in his mouth. “It can be a very small design [elle ne dure pas plus de sept à huit minutes, NDLR]This group of young people is different,” he said.
Found twenty years ago by chance in the catalog of an auction, first acquired by an individual before being recently reissued and purchased by the National Library in 2023, this score contains the seeds of many your future work. To begin with Daphnis and Chloe which will be played the same evening*, by musicians from Les Siècles orchestra, Radio et France Choir and Renaud Capuçon on violin.
Entitled “Lovers who follow the path” in reference to the song by Armand Silvestre (1837-1901) set to music, this work, designed for singers and songwriters, takes the form of a handwritten booklet. written of 18 pages, written by black ink. and signed by the master monogram: an oval with the letters M and R but also the letter J upside down (a gift to his engineer father Joseph Ravel). A method of signing that Ravel only used occasionally until December 1914. This piece was, in fact, written between 1900 and 1905.
Rarity of Ravel
“Its creation in Montpellier, under the direction of Louis Langrée – replacing François-Xavier Roth was originally planned – was a small event. No public performance of this work, in fact, was known during the composer’s lifetime,” explains Michel Orier, director of the festival. “An audition may have taken place at the National Conservatory of Music but nothing is certain,” added Lionel Chow. The director of the Radio France Choir said that he was more than happy to be able to participate in this edition as the writing of this work is close to that of Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) who is related to it.
READ again The centenary of Gabriel Fauré: when France (re)discovered its BeethovenWas it commissioned from Ravel by the man who was his composition teacher at the Conservatoire national de Paris from 1898? Whether. Many words in any case give the impression of being nods to Gabriel Fauré who himself was inspired by twelve poems by Armand Silvestre between 1878 and 1904 to compose pieces as diverse as Traveller, The cradle, There is loveor Let’s keep it secret. “The compositions of this article can respond to the study, which Fauré gave to his student, with attention to the tests of the Prix de Rome that Maurice Ravel tried many times, in vain,” Lionel Sow noted.
Abel Gance’s new soundtrack
Another exception will be performed on July 18 and 19. Here is the seven-hour score specially written by composer Simon Cloquet-Laffolye to serve as the soundtrack to Abel Gance’s masterpiece: Napoleon. This legendary film, restored by the National Cinematography Center (CNC) for fifteen years, is the subject of the first screening in the Seine musicale (Boulogne-Billancourt) on July 4 and 5. Opportunity for viewers to discover, in a new light, this monument of the seventh image.
READ again “Napoleon” by Abel Gance, the benevolent resurrection of the masterpiece “The challenge is great. Only 30 minutes of the score written by Honegger are known. I have to imagine the rest,” smiled Simon Cloquet-Laffolye. Multiple references to great works that served, in the 19th century, as accompaniment to silent cinema, from Mozart to Mahler, yet the composer does not give in to the ease of pastiche. He said: “I want to imagine the original melodies that do not show the mystical poetry of this great work, some war scenes that are especially wonderful.
“With Gance, most sounds seem spontaneous, rather than intentional. It shows the dual nature of romanticism for the substance and symbolism for the form, in a Hugo-like material,” says director Jean Epstein. The score signed by Simon Cloquet-Laffolye has been faithful to this line. “A corpus of about 150 pieces from the end of the 18th to the end of the 20th century from Joseph Haydn to Krzysztof Pendecki and unpublished texts. is descriptive,” he said.
The problem, according to him, is “a combination of history and representation by creating a complex weave from selected works with the production of a new sound. » Adding to the problem, he avoids the use of certain anachronistic effects such as the use of sound effects to simulate cannons, the sound of horses or swords in special battles. The tone matches (dis) the scale of the film.
“Only Radio France can cope with such a task,” sighs Simon Cloquet-Laffolye, also surprised to be able to work both with the musicians and masters of the Maison Ronde, but also the Orchester National de France and the tenor Benjamin Bernheim…
READ again Benjamin Bernheim: “We must democratize access to the art of music” After two and a half years of writing, the recording of the 1,500 page score required more than 2,000 takes made in around fifty days by 250 musicians of the Maison de la radio. The result pleased the director’s daughter herself. « I feel that my father is next to me », announced Clarisse Gance, at the end of the screening of the first part of the film on May 14, at the Cannes Film Festival.
The cinema will be outdoors this year in Montpellier. The opening concert, given on July 8, Place de l’Europe at 9 p.m., will combine excerpts from the credits ofIndiana Jonesof An insultof Fantasia, Harry Potter etc Star Wars, alternating pieces by John Williams, Georges Delerue, Alexandre Desplat and Paul Dukas. All genres will be represented in the following days: from classical to electro to jazz in more than 100 concerts given in fifty venues across the metropolis.
* Concert on July 9 at 8 pm at the Corum / Berlioz Opera in Montpellier
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