GRAAL THÉÂTRE

Two Flemish top ensembles and two top soloists from the contemporary music scene perform the two most spectacular concertos for ensemble and violin and piano respectively of recent decades.

With the title ‘Graal théâtre’, Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023) refers in her concerto unambiguously to the legend of King Arthur, Merlin and the knights of the Round Table. Metaphorically, too, she was inspired by the search for the Holy Grail. Jacques Roubaud’s book by the same name prompted her to do something that had long seemed impossible to her: write a violin concerto, a genre that “already counts so many moving and beautiful masterpieces”. With her tender language, she does full justice to both motifs.

In ‘Corps’, concerto for piano and ensemble by Raphaël Cendo (°1975), there is exuberant experimentation with gestures and clenched sound clusters that collide, burst apart and explode into space: Cendo seeks a saturation of musical form in his music scores in which the piano presides over a wild dance. The virtuosity that Cendo demands of the instrumental ensemble – in which each player is required to perform a spectacular solo part in its own right – rivals the waterfall of sound produced by the solo piano.