Camille Thomas VOICE OF HOPE

VOICE OF HOPE

Stéphane Denève / Brussels Philharmonic GUILLAUME CONNESSON Lost Horizon

After Lucifer (2014) and Pour sortir au jour (2016), the French composer Guillaume Connesson returns to Deutsche Grammophon with "Lost Horizon", a new double-album directed by Stéphane Denève at the head of the Brussels Philharmonic. Already awarded the Victoire de la Musique Classique in the Composer category in 2015, Guillaume Connesson received last February his second award as Composer of the Year 2019 for "Les Horizons perdus", Concerto for Violin created in September 2018 that we find within this double album. These two CDs show two facets of the composer's art and offer two trips. One outside, with the fantastic and festive "Cities of Lovecraft" and the saxophone Concerto A Kind of Trane performed by Timothy McAllister. A work that recalls the memory of the jazzman John Coltrane, real incarnation of the solo instrument as he imagines it. The other is a journey inside oneself illustrated by the Violin Concerto Les Horizons Perdus. Performed by Renaud Capuçon, this score refers to James Hilton's novel "Lost Horizon" (1933), adapted for film by Frank Capra. "The Tomb of Regrets" is a slow movement in which Guillaume Connesson was tempted by a very linear, almost choral writing to explore intimate feelings, those of time passing, buried regrets and impossible returns . Created in a short period between 2015 (A Kind of Trane) and 2018 (Les Horizons Perdus), these four scores show the many facets of a composer who draws his inspiration from the sources of scholarly art as much as popular, without borders or taboos.

Royal Scottish National Orchestra / Stéphane Denève GUILLAUME CONNESSON Cosmic Trilogy - The Shining One

There’s a new generation of French composers we know little about on this side of the channel, names like Bacri, Beffa, Escaich, Zavaro, and Connesson, now around 40 (see Philip Clark, 1/10, for details of the French context). Thanks to this CD and Connesson’s association with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra we can start to discover more about him.

Aleph, the first part of Connesson’s Cosmic Trilogy, was commissioned by the RSNO and dedicated to its French conductor. The whole cycle is involved with ideas deriving from Stephen Hawking and Kandinsky but Aleph makes an orchestral showpiece on its own – a kind of supercharged version of Ravel’s Daphnis with more than a hint of John Adams.

Connesson admits that his style is eclectic but the much longer second section, also an RSNO commission, lacks the rhythmic impetus that sustains the first one and it wanders in a kind of Debussian reverie. The third section, Supernova, actually written first, inhabits the limitless vistas of outer space. Influences stream past – Messiaen, Milhaud, Bartók, Stravinsky, film music – in an efficiently scored panoply. The CD ends oddly with The Shining One, described as a piano concerto although it lasts only nine minutes. There’s a central section that starts by recalling John Ireland – that must be a coincidence – before the piece whips up to a hyperactive finish. Committed performances vividly recorded. (Peter Dickinson / Gramophone)

Stéphane Denève / Brussels Philharmonic PROKOFIEV Romantic Suites

On 17 November, the latest CD by the Brussels Philharmonic and music director Stéphane Denève will appear on Deutsche Grammophon. Brussels Philharmonic is the first symphony orchestra in Belgium to work with this record label. For its second recording with the more than 100-year-old Deutsche Grammophon, the orchestra opted for the ballet music of Sergei Prokofiev. Denève’s touch is clearly noticeable: he created a new musical dramaturgy, choosing from the existing suites, giving rise to new and exciting combinations.

Stéphane Denève, music director Brussels Philharmonic:
"I have always felt very close to Prokofiev's music, it is therefore an immense joy for me to be able to propose, thanks to the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label, my own suites of two of his most marvellous ballets: Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella. The Brussels Philharmonic and myself want to offer a narrative journey, a romantic vision of those pieces, speaking to the senses and imagination. I hope that this recording will inspire reverie and evoke exalted emotions, in one word: infinite romanticism!”

In 2016, the Philharmonic recorded 'Connesson: Pour sortir au jour' for Deutsche Grammophon. That recording won a Diapason d’or of the year, a CHOC de Classica of the year and a Caecilia prize.

Lucas Jussen / Arthur Jussen SAINT-SAËNS - POULENC - SAY

The Jussen brothers were born into a musical family. Their father Paul Jussen is a timpani player with the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra in the Netherlands and their mother Christianne van Gelder is a flautist and teacher. “Music was always there and we often joined them when they had rehearsals or when there was a night concert,” says Lucas. “The hall where our father rehearses is very close to our house, so whenever there was a great soloist or a nice conductor we were free to come and listen. So we did many times. So there wasn’t really any escaping from it. And we’re happy about that.” 

After winning young musical talent awards and doing well in piano competitions, the brothers studied in Portugal and Brazil in 2005 with master pianist Maria João Píres. Dutch teacher Jan Wijn then took them under his wing. Recently, Lucas studied with Menahem Pressler in the US and Dmitri Bashkirov in Madrid, while Arthur continued with Wijn at the Amsterdam Conservatory. “We still visit him often when we need help, when we need to prepare new pieces, and he’s a huge help, but we’re not anymore connected to an institute, like a real school,” says Lucas.

Mathieu Dufour / Stéphane Denève / Brussels Philharmonic GUILLAUME CONNESSON Pour Sortir au Jour

Born in 1970, Guillaume Connesson is too young to have had to submit to the ideological and aesthetical diktats imposed on the previous generation of composers.
His music, always well-sounding and often spectacular, has absorbed all sorts of multiple influences. His very personal world is a work in progress, growing out of the mix of pragmatism and naïveté which is the trademark of all great creators. Over time and along a great diversity of compositions, Guillaume Connesson’s inspiration follows, in the composer’s own words, “the complex mosaïc of the modern world”.

His first steps were guided by a need to open up to other influences, like pop music - as evidenced in Night Club for orchestra (1996), Double Quatuor (1994) and Disco-Toccata (1994). This primarily rhythmic and hedonist vein, so rare in contemporary ‘serious’ music, reached its peak with the brilliant Techno-Parade for flute, clarinet and piano (2002). As in the works of American composers of the repetitive school (Reich, Adams) - another decisive influence, to wit Sextuor (1998) - the spirit of dance is omnipresent in Connesson’s music. It is therefore not surprising to learn that the cinema also inspired him : L’Aurore (1998) was composed as soundtrack to Murnau’s eponymous silent movie. Guillaume Connesson’s orchestral writing tries to create strong images, that will have a long-lasting effect on the listener. Yet he likes the uncertain, the unpredictable, the meandering melodies which find their resolution in a rich, dense, sometimes thick-woven yet always intell(e)gible writing. L’Appel du feu, a suite from L’Aurore, Enluminures (1999) or Triptyque symphonique (1997-2007) demonstrate his unequalled know-how as an orchestrator, whose harmonic twists and turns are always at the service of expression. In other words, the composer’s luminous compositional language is never the result nor the starting point of vain experimentation. Pragmatism vs idealism ? Yes indeed, if that means giving the pleasure of the ear precedence over fruitless speculation. Connesson - how revolutionary - writes music for the knowing musician. With all the means at his disposal, he also tries to adress a wider public by capturing its attention and sharpening its curiosity.

Add to his love of opera the fact that he is not afraid of lyrical outbursts, and it logically follows that Guillaume Connesson would write for the voice. Liturgies de l’ombre, Le Livre de l’amour and Medea, for female voice, all composed between 2000 and 2004, certainly mark a shift, if not a turning point in his career. The pieces reveal a more tormented, anguished inner world. Elegies fraught with emotion (De l’espérance, on a poem by Charles Péguy, or the complete Liturgies de l’ombre cycle ; My Sweet Sister on a poem by Lord Byron in Le Livre de l’amour and even in an orchestra piece from the same period : Une lueur dans l’âge sombre, 2005) or desperate, passionate scenes (the fierce Medea after a text by Jean Vauthier) let new interrogations show through.
His cantata for solo voice, choir and orchestra Athanor (2003) - an ambitious, striking, flamboyant piece - synthetizes all these influences and inspirations. The title is a reference to the alchimist’s furnace. A symbol, not to say an emblem for an artist in ceaseless pursuit of the miracle that would let music instantly turn the next minute into eternity. (Bertrand Dermoncourt)