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Henry Dutilleux - Time Clock, invention of the French decadence


On May 7, 2009, after much waiting, was created at the Theatre des Champs Elysees song cycle by Henri Dutilleux "Time Clock" written for the American soprano Renee Fleming. The composer has put a lot of time to get there, he has over 90 years and has always been meticulous. A partial

creation had already been organized in three of the four-song cycle about a year ago, Saito Kinen Festival in Japan.

But this time the fourth song on a text by Baudelaire, was created with the Orchestra National de France conducted by Seiji Ozawa.

Henri Dutilleux has written a set of four songs and an interlude with orchestra,

Time Clock Jean Tardieu
mask Jean Tardieu
The last poem by Robert Desnos
Interlude
Get drunk Charles Baudelaire

This cycle is like a kind of manifesto of French music, he was placed between two large orchestral cycles by Ravel and Berlioz as in a box. To create partial Seiji Ozawa chose the Pavane for a Dead Princess Debussy and Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique. This time, the chief who is in love with French music and directs the works by heart, with great transparency, chose Mother Goose Ravel and Berlioz's Romeo and Juliet.

In this context, there emerges a strange impression of these melodies, as if it were an anachronism. Compared to what Dutilleux wrote before, this music is good, there is less dissonance. But it is an incredible harmonic sophistication and emerges as the fragrance of a bygone era. If I did not know that it was written in the 2000s, I was satisfied to hear music written in the years 1920 or 1930. There is no abstraction in Henri Dutilleux is meant at Olivier Messiaen, who also wrote songs, and the impression given is that of a heady and sophisticated music in the extreme.

I felt to hear the music for the French equivalent of the last four songs of Richard Strauss. I wonder if it's not intentional on the part of Henri Dutilleux chooses here a text by Robert Desnos's last poem, found in the Terezin concentration camp in which Desnos died. It would not be an original poem, but a French translation of the Czech translation of another poem by Robert Desnos, "I dreamed of you." All these links created between the past, this, the original perception of time gives a feeling hovering, intended by the composer. He wanted in the last poem of Charles Baudelaire, the singing so that "the feeling of excitement is manifested more and more," since early this cycle is thought for the voices of Renee Fleming (yes, Hentai Dutilleux good taste him. Not like some s. .. )

It is intended by the composer, performer and is ideal in giving a special atmosphere to these texts, is a mixture of naivete and sophistication extreme that only she, as a bonus with some small accents verismo. Her singing style has changed slightly, as in his recent album of the last four songs by Richard Strauss, precisely, with a new taste for diction (here it is difficult to understand, probably also because of the Dutilleux writing) and severe beautiful. Shaped and obviously happy to sing this cycle in Paris, she returned in full a second time.

A beautiful concert, with this strange feeling of having witnessed the birth of French music decadent, just like the decadent Viennese of the interwar and sophisticated style to the extreme.