2023-07-03 14:24:34
The Dutilleux quartet in the church of Luzarches, Guillaume Chilemme (violin), Mathieu Handtschoewercker (violin), Thomas Duran (cello) and David Gaillard (viola), July 1, 2023. DAVID BLONDIN
Created in 2020 by cellist Héloïse Luzzati, the association Elles – Women Composers « offers a 360° field of action to compensate for the absence of women in musical programming today. » However, it is not uncommon for female composers such as Finnish Kaija Saariaho, Korean Unsuk Chin, Moldovan Sofia Gubaidoulina, Austrian Olga Neuwirth and their French counterparts Betsy Jolas or Edith Canat de Chizy to feature as headliners. events devoted to contemporary music. The observation made by the association therefore finds its justification above all in the minimal part reserved nowadays for female composers of the past.
The festival A time for them, which takes place until July 9 in heritage sites in Val-d’Oise, tries to reverse the trend with 100% female programs, based mainly on the exhumation of unpublished manuscripts. This was the case, Saturday July 1, in the church of Luzarches with the Quatuor Dutilleux.
Written at the age of 20 by the musician on leaving the Conservatoire, the String Quartet by Rita Strohl (1865-1941) is probably not the ideal work to invite the rediscovery of a personality. We can see some major aspirations here – perhaps in the wake of a Lyric Symphony dedicated to Joan of Arc, certain elements of which would be reused here – but they are limited at the moment of their revelation and quickly stifled by the desire to demonstrate a newly acquired know-how. Proof of Rita Strohl’s inability to construct a long-term subject, the use of a methodical and scholarly fugue to complete an erratic finale.
Gestures of a subtle fantasy
Emblematic of a “360° field of action”, not only by its presence in a feminine panorama which covers nearly one hundred and fifty years of history but also by the spatial reality of its play, A broken flower, given in creation, Claire-Mélanie Sinnhuber (born in 1973), never loses the thread of a music full of caresses and bow bites. A very beautiful miniature with flower of strings which likes to mark the pulsation on a repeated note to better deviate from it by gestures of a subtle fantasy.
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More than the destiny of a plant evoked by its title (“broken flower”, in Latin), it is an aerial journey, nicely served by the acoustics of the church, that this score makes us think of. good for today (harmonies, timbres, stereophonic effects) but without exclusive aesthetics. In particular, from an alto solo which flutters at the heart of the work before making silky emulators among its partners. The gentle lambs – their textures sometimes have the velvety feel of wool – from the Quatuor Dutilleux are then joined by Xavier Phillips, an overpowered cellist whose integration into the group is akin to the entry of a wolf into a sheepfold, to interpret the string quintet written in 1936 by Maria Bach (1896-1978). The two cello quintet, with Xavier Phillips, rather gives the impression of being a two viola quintet (with Thomas Duran’s cello sounding more clearly).
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