Arachne

For the past three seasons, the Aberdeen Sound Festival has been involved, with a touch of British humor (again), in the preservation of “endangered” (instrumental) species… This year, the oboe! Laurent Cuniot, whose favourite instrument is the oboe, had to make the trip, with TM+.

First piece for solo oboe of the program, Interlude IV by Marc-André Dalbavie is a bravura piece, which builds little by little out of the silence on principles of speed and in the register of virtuosity.

Solo again, Arachne is a brief, silken thread, a tiny breath of Helen Grime, a young Scottish composer and oboist herself, with a refined and sensitive classicism.

Solo again, but for cello this time: Jonathan Harvey’s Three Sketches, a masterpiece of the very few in the service of the immense.

In trio, seduction of timbres and rhythmic evidence with Martin Matalon’s Formas de arena, in a densified transcription for clarinet, harp and cello that modifies its transparency.

Finally, in quartet, with a new version, purely instrumental and enriched by a harp, of Trans-Portées, the piece for soprano and small ensemble by Laurent Cuniot, created last season in Bangladesh. A romance without words of absolute love, between inner ardor and the frenzy of intoxication.