Now in a mature period, Oscar Bianchi has learned, better than anyone, how to renew his art and his professional obstacles, by exploring the challenges of participative forms and novel instrumentations, not to mention curating in a variety of geographic spaces.

The same can be said for musical creation as for friendship between people from different nations, both in the Middle East and elsewhere: something never to be taken for granted, that can always be improved, and dependent on the goodwill of unique personalities, such as Daniel Barenboim, co-founder of the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, a place of entertainment, training and reflection.

The same can be said for musical creation as for friendship between people from different nations : something never to be taken for granted, that can always be improved, and dependent on the goodwill of unique personalities, such as Daniel Barenboim, co-founder of the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, a place of entertainment, training and reflection.

For those who were not already convinced, this period of confinement and social distancing has proven that music is not only an art, but above all else a wonderful means of communication! How better to express at a distance what we feel to our families, our friends, our audiences, than by playing it, singing it, writing it with notes?

The composers of the publishers Durand Salabert Eschig share many qualities: perhaps more than any other, we notice a tremendous desire and an irrepressible need to communicate. You already know that their generosity is unequaled when it comes to sharing their talent and their emotions through music.

Jean-Frédéric Neuburger, keyboard and sound magician, who first spontaneously chose to set these exclusive and nevertheless universal "musical chronicles" with eight piano improvisations record during the lockdown. A powerful gesture, which will set a precedent!

The daily rhythm of the lockdown has shown to everyone that social distancing is accompanied by an inversed emotional proximity but nonetheless of the same intensity. Thus, everyone around the world can now experience for themselves the miracle well-known to admirers of opera on DVD or on the television: the sound and visual traces of a voice, a gesture, or a face, even distanced by time or space, are still capable of conveying an unforgettable emotional charge.

After fifteen uninterrupted years of musical creation, including last year's lyrical event (Les Bienveillantes, based on the eponymous novel by Jonathan Littell), Hèctor Parra has once again drawn upon his multiple passions to summon the muse of composition.

A passion for architectural forms, enlarged sounds, and a dialogue between the arts: we are once again faced with this pantheon of styles of the most admired Spanish composer of his generation in his new pianistic-poetic cycle inspired by Joan Miró's Constellations.

Iannis Xenakis was the one who, in the history of post-war Western music, designed for the first time a formal structure for his works according to the paradigms derived from the mathematical advances of his time.

An emblematic figure of musical innovation for over four creative decades, Iannis Xenakis will be particularly celebrated in the coming season, marking the 20 years of his passing in 2001.

Find below the tribute brochure dedicated to the composer, the first step in a series of upcoming tributes surrounding his work, and, of course dedicated playlists to listen without moderation.

These times of social distancing are conducive to the discovery of the beautiful in forms that are sometimes less grandiloquent than the canonical repertoire.

Small is beautiful.

Over the years, the artists of our publishing houses often excelled in using these innovative, delicate, and nevertheless colourful formats, such as the string orchestras or chamber orchestras in the "Mozart" formation.

They also knew how to make the ensemble their own with "one per voice", following Schoenberg's famous opus 9, and even explore the charms of arrangements of works from the repertoire.

We share with you this week this expressive palette as a gift in these times of change which will soon signal our collective return to the concert halls and opera houses.

— The younger generation to which you belong has developed a keen interest in the vocal repertoire. Your catalogue already includes several vocal works and you are about to create a new one for the Ensemble Musicatreize. Could you explain to us what, in your case, has led you to develop such an interest in singing?

 As a composer and amateur, I have always been very interested in all things related to the expressive side of music, which is, I believe, its freest and liveliest aspect side and, ultimately, its most human. It is obvious that there is no instrument more human than the voice, an instrument intimately linked to our own selves. I am specifically interested in the sung voice and, more precisely (due to my love - that is to say, my interest and respect - for Franco-Flemish polyphony) by multiple sung voices, the ensemble of voices.

— You have chosen to set to music a text by a "contemporary" of Beethoven, his elder by several decades, but not just any contemporary, Goethe. Why? What qualities of the second Wanderer Nachtlied spoke to you?

 As I mentioned the human aspect of music, it’s precisely this aspect that interests me in poetry and any other form of art. Goethe's figure and work are, in this sense, exemplary and paradigmatic. In addition, in this little nocturnal poem, he makes reference to the great theme of the place of mankind in the face of nature, an essential position that we, in our modern lifetyle, often forget and neglect in a way that is, I think, very irresponsible. Schubert’s song, one of the composers who touches me the most, also uses this poem and so does Liszt’s version (so austere, so moving, so intelligent) which has long fascinated me.

 —  What role does the famous Bagatelle, known as the "Letter to Elise", play in the overall form of the work? How do you treat it?

 My piece is structured around an "A". It is from an initial and solitary "A" that a whole slow polyphony for 8 voices unfolds. The first six notes of Beethoven's famous bagatelle are heard, played together as a chord, when the poem refers to the birds right in the middle of the structure. After a climax, everything closes in little by little on the "A", in the same way as Beethoven’s work. In short, my work is a sort of arch that uses its central section to sound in harmony the masterful notes from Bonn.

— Could you tell us about your project for the Ensemble Intercontemporain. Where are you in the writing stage of this project? What is it like working with the plastic artist Julie Beauvais? What is the projected timeline for this project?

 It is not yet a public project and for this reason I cannot talk too much about it. But it's a grand project that we've been considering for several years and I'm about to write the first note of the score. If all goes well it will see the light in the first months of the 21/22 season...