Trio en 5 mouvements, 2001
For violin, cello and piano
duration : 11 minutes
Available on BabelScores 

Commissioned by Radio France for “Alla breve”

Concert comments

This work was created from two superimposed formal realities. It is a 10 minute work, written for a radio program that broadcasts two minutes of the music every day, with a broadcast of the full work (10 minutes) at the end of the week. On the one hand, there is the work as a whole, the 10 minute piece that can be performed without interruption. On the other hand, each movement with its own structural coherence can be played alone, in a separate performance.

This situation induces two different perceptions of the work, since listening can be fragmented or global. Each movement has an inner structure with a beginning and an end, but while listening to the entire piece, the tracks are sometimes blurred because repetitions or variations cut across the movements.

In fact, the division of the work into five movements of two minutes each develops a dialectic between chronometric time, corresponding to the external structure marked by the beginning and end of each movement, and the internal time of the work with his own intrinsic structure.
Both temporal notions are developed simultaneously.

The various sections of the work stem from the expansion of a rhythmic base cell, which itself is a generator of musical figures.

The instrumental work is highly virtuosic. The temporal constraints are due to the external structure, which forces the material to bend and stretch in order to adapt. These stretching and compression movements produce calm and melodic lines alternating with an intensification of content that at times generates a very dense energy.

However, the expressiveness of the work is never sidelined. On the contrary, the work is based on the sound result, as always in my work, so its musical expression is predominant.

Listen

Sona Khochafian, violin; Pierre Strauch, cello; Dimitri Vassilakis, piano. February 2002, by France Musique.