(Châtillon-sous-Bagneux, 1974)
Après des études au CNSM de Paris où il remporte 5 premiers prix (analyse, esthétique, orchestration, composition, histoire de la musique), il participe au cursus d'informatique de l'Ircam. Il débute ensuite une carrière internationale, et collabore avec de prestigieux solistes (Michel Dalberto, Barbara Hendricks, Paul Meyer, Emmanuel Pahud, Jean-Guihen Queyras), chefs d'orchestres (Pierre Boulez, Laurent Cuniot, Péter Eötvös, Laurence Equilbey, Gunter Herbig, Bernhard Kontarsky, Emmanuel Krivine, Jonathan Nott, François-Xavier Roth), ensembles (Alternance, Accentus, InterContemporain, TM+, quatuor Danel), et orchestres (Bamberg, La Chambre Philharmonique, radio de Francfort, académie de Lucerne, orchestre de Paris, radio de Sarrebrücken).
Son catalogue, comprenant une cinquantaine de pièces, aborde de multiples genres, du solo à l'opéra. Ses oeuvres ont été programmées dans des salles de concerts comme le Concertgebouw d'Amsterdam, la Philharmonie de Cologne, le KKL à Lucerne, l'auditorium de la radio de Madrid, la Scala de Milan, le Teatro San Carlo de Naples, Carnegie Hall et le Lincoln Center à New York, la Cité de la musique, la salle Gaveau, et le théâtre des Champs Elysées à Paris.?Il reçoit plusieurs distinctions dans des concours internationaux (Stuttgart en 1999, Tribune des compositeurs de l'Unesco en 2001), les prix Hervé Dugardin et Georges Enesco de la Sacem en 2000 et 2005, le prix André Caplet de l'Institut en 2005, le prix Belmont de la fondation Forberg-Schneider en 2007, et de nombreuses récompenses pour ses enregistrements discographiques (dont deux "coups de coeur" de l'académie Charles Cros). Il est en résidence au festival Octobre en Normandie pour son édition 2001, à Bologne dans le cadre du programme "Villa Médicis hors les murs" de l'AFAA en 2002, à l'Académie de France à Rome (Villa Médicis) en 2004-2005, et au festival de Besançon pour ses éditions 2006 et 2007.
Le festival Musica lui a consacré un portrait en 2006, autour de la création de l'Autre côté, opéra composé en collaboration avec le librettiste François Regnault, pour 7 chanteurs, choeur, percussions solistes, et grand orchestre.?Ses oeuvres sont publiées aux éditions Henry Lemoine.
PREMIERE
15/11/2012? : Paris, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées?. Choeur de Radio France, Orchestre National de France, Daniele Gatti (conduc.)
NOTE
This is the second time that I have been asked to pay musical homage to Beethoven: following Riccardo Chailly's request, I incorporated the opening Bb from the Fourth Symphony into an orchestral piece written for the Leipzig Gwandhaus Orchestra. This new work uses the same instrumentation as the Ninth Symphony (with additional percussion) and quotes the opening sextuplet from the first movement of the symphony. As I had the possibility of incorporating a choir, the connection to the Ninth is also found in the poetry that will be sung: I chose various ideologically engaged texts by Schiller (poetic texts not taken from his dramatic works), which could even be considered vindictive, but that I treat in a more abstract, more contemplative manner; texts that are sometimes short, sometimes long, and use a particular prosody each time, each of which infers a different type of orchestration, infers a particular sonority. The choice of these poems can thus be considered as the first compositional act. ?This work (…) follows a first cantata with texts by Rilke and a second cantata with texts by Leopardi.??
Bruno Mantovani? (from an interview by C. Wasselin)
NOTICE
The notion of conflict has been central to my concerns since I have been writing music. It has fed both my taste for the type of concerto, but also for spatialization. In recent years, I have tried to synthesize these two axes in the writing of pieces in which the solo part was assigned to various instruments of the same nature. Here, two violas are honored. In this long work (35 minutes), the two instruments operate either in a logic of fusion (homorhythmic) or in the fast relay that creates the illusion of a single melodic line led by the passage of a sound (joined with a space) to another. The conflict is also on a formal level, since some materials are presented juxtaposed, without any logic other than the search for contrast. By a set of returns, the form that finds its coherence is also based on an economy of means. Commissioned by Radio France, Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège and the WDR, the concerto is dedicated to its two creators Tabea Zimmermann and Antoine Tamestit.
Bruno Mantovani, Editions Lemoine