« I want to give a face not only to the drowned corpses which wash up on Europe's shores, but to the scores of the living wandering through Europe without an identity, no longer officially recognisable as alive. »

“This Bauhaus lesson was for me the starting point of a sort of allegory of friendship. The score can be read as essentially bi-thematic – a circular (rather modal) figure, a little closed in on itself, opposed to very dynamic features of a more chromatic or even serial nature – to ultimately compose a richer and more complex figure.”

Based on Kafka’s short story First Sorrow, Philippe Hersant composed a “miniature opera” illustrated as a circus by Gaëtan Lévêque, and put to words by Elise Vigier and Frédérique Loliée from the Théâtre des Lucioles and Leslie Kaplan.

“I have sometimes in this piece also wanted to draw my inspiration from the piano playing styles of contemporary pianist Philip Glass.”

“ I wanted to write a piece of music that would be evocative of the depth of that dark period of history as told by Césaire, with its violence and blackness, but at the same time with its intense brightness and the pride and joy that goes with it. ”

“This piece is constructed in a very dynamic form, in one breath, full of agitation and turbulence just as I like it – without conforming to the sacrosanct central “adagio” breathing, for which I sought more poetic colours by juxtaposing them like mirrors that would reflect each other's images and play with their perception so as to instil a constantly renewed sense of movement and vitality.”

After Pierre Boulez in 2016 and Thierry Escaich in 2017, the Festival de Pâques paints a portrait of Éric Tanguy, “one of the most inspiring examples of the art music of today, rich in its imagination, superbly constructed and accessible to many” (Olivier Bellamy).

The words used here are devoid of their original meaning and their layout creates an unusual syntax, a kind of a polyphony of meanings that means nothing.

“Dance is central to my work as a composer,” says François Meïmoun. After La Danse de la terre et du ciel [Dance of Heaven and Earth] for orchestra, La Danse du Peyotl [Peyote Dance] and Hora [Time] for piano, La Danse selon Matisse [Dance according to Matisse] continues his exploration into musical gestures and energy fuelled by the spectacle of dancers in movement.