Manoury: Zones de turbulences
After the world premiere in December 2013 on the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra’s Musica Viva series, Philippe Manoury’s double piano concerto Zones de turbulences will have its French premiere at the Festival Présences on February 14 in Paris. The work will be performed by GrauSchumacher Piano Duo (Photo: Dietmar-Scholz) and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.

Philippe Manoury describes his work:
Five movements. The first could be entitled “codes on the wrong track.” It is based on false Morse code patterns that, by sending incomprehensible information, in the end cause turbulences full of incongruities. The second, the shortest I have ever written, is a challenge to the brevity of Beethoven’s tenth Bagatelle op. 119. The third unfolds at a contemplative and slow tempo, interrupted by highly agitated motifs based around harmonic resonances. The fourth is a monody between the two pianos, but every note gives rise to divergent and eccentric disturbances. As for the last movement, the most highly developed, it recapitulates all the previous movements and tries, as far as it is possible, to add a little more disorder.

Oscar Bianchi: Permeability
After critically acclaimed premieres in Frankfurt and Porto, Oscar Bianchi's Permeability continues its European tour. The large work for ensemble and electronics will be performed on February 16 in Paris at the Festival Présences by Ensemble Modern under the baton of Franck Ollu. The Swiss premiere follows on March 22 in Geneva at the Festival Archipel, with William Blank conducting the Namascae Ensemble.

Oscar Bianchi describes his work:
Thanks to all technological developments, music making after World War II, profoundly influenced by the exploration and the foundation of electronic music, taught us that we were never going to be able to listen to sound in the same way we were used to before. As lively and complex music phenomena were unveiling, from the decryption of microscopical dimensions of sound to its physical nature, the sound explorer--the composer--had access to another level of comprehension of sound, and, along with it, another meaning of sound.

For someone like me, who has always been embracing the greater magnitude in which sound interacts with humans, I personally interpret this historical 'other' access to sound as an access to an 'other' state of consciousness. As a homage to this historical ground-breaking shift, a ground-breaking enhancement in the eternal relationships between being and sound, I composed Permeability.

The title refers to the quality used to describe the transcendence between categories (humans, animals, objects) that in ancient times represented an accepted and shared vision of existence (as seen in the Chauvet Cave's wall paintings, the world’s oldest art, Aurignacian period, approximately 30,000–32,000 BP). The hidden law that allowed these bonds across categories is commonly named Permeability.

As technology in music might well contribute to bring back the grandiosity of sound in all its dimensions (physical, structural, emotional, and intellectual), letting composers and creators cross boundaries between categories and state of mind, musical forces and musical dimensions are here celebrated in their being intertwined, complementary, and above all permeable.