On Saturday October 30 Partita II and Tensio by Philippe Manoury will be performed as part of the Offbeat Festival in Copenhagen. There will also be the premiere of the world premiere of Argumenta, a new work for two percussions commissioned and premiered by the Copenhagen Marimba duo (Mathias Reumert and Anders Kann Elten). Here are a few words from the composer about the work:
Le Livre des Claviers, which is now a part of the "standard" repertoire for percussionists, included an opus for marimba duo. Was this the work that forged the link between yourself and the Danish percussionist duo, Matthias Reumert and Anders Kann-Elten, at the heart of the Argumenta project?
You would have to ask Mathias Reumert, one of the two percussionists, who was a student at the University of San Diego in California when I was a professor there. He played Le Livre des Claviers at the university with the students of Steve Schick's percussion class. Upon his return to Denmark, he contacted me to ask me to write for their duo. That’s how the project came about. But there are many similarities between Le Livre and Argumenta. I superimposed keyboard techniques with which I had experimented, such as playing with 4 sticks or the possibility of individually muffling sounds with the vibraphone. In Le livre, these techniques are used separately depending on whether it is a piece for two marimbas or for vibraphone, but here they are combined in the same composition.
The duo's website pleasantly states that this duet, "virtuosic and telepathic", enjoys melodic instruments with "warm" (marimba) and "jazzy" (vibraphone) sounds. These are words that we don’t often hear in the context of contemporary creation, and perhaps somewhat out of step with your intentions during the composition of the work (which is a good thing: creation is nourished by contrasts and challenges!). Could explain to us the objective of this work from your point of view...
I wasn’t aware of this description. I talked for a long time with the duo, by phone or online, about the arrangement of the instruments to know how to be able to move quickly from one instrument to the other in order to have a clear vision of all the technical possibilities. Knowing my particular taste for keyboards, rather than indeterminate sounds, they immediately accepted my idea of focusing only on marimbas and vibraphones, with a few additional small instruments. It is a free-form work - which does not at all mean that it has no form, quite the opposite in fact - which starts from quite contrasting musical proposals, with many breaks, leading up to an extremely virtuosic "perpetuum mobile" nearly 100 bars long, which the two musicians will have to play by heart because there is no time to turn the pages or read a score at this speed. The title Argumenta comes from the fact that these two musicians will be a bit like two characters debating a subject by taking varied, contrasting and, finally, converging positions, with, at the very end, a little reminder that they have not always been on the same converging line.
Philippe Manoury- Argumenta
for two percussionists
World premiere: October 30, 2021
Festival Offbeat - Copenhague
Mathias Reumert et Anders Kann Elten, percussion
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Philippe Manoury- Partita II
for solo violin & electronics
World premiere: October 30, 2021
Festival Offbeat - Copenhague
Hae-Sun Kang, violin
Jacques Warnier, electronic device
Philippe Manoury- Tensio « deuxième quatuor à cordes avec électronique »
for string quartet & electronics
World premiere: October 30, 2021
Festival Offbeat - Copenhague
Ayane Kawamura, violin
Helia Fassi, violin
Violaine Willem, viola
Hsing-Han Tsai, cello
Jacques Warnier, electronic device