Born November 12, 1970 in Buenos Aires, Oscar STRASNOY is a French-Argentine composer, conductor and pianist. He studied composition, conducting and piano with (a.o.) Gérard Grisey at the Conservatoire de Paris and Hans Zender at the Hochschule für Musik Frankfurt am Main. He wrote a dozen stage works, from pocket-operas to full orchestra operas, also orchestral works, concerti, chamber music, two secular cantatas and several song cycles. His works are regularly played in theaters and festivals such as Berlin Staatsoper, Hamburg Staatsoper, Oper Zürich, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Paris Opéra Comique, Bordeaux Opera, Berliner Philharmonie, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Mozarteum Salzburg, Buenos Aires Teatro Colón, Rome Opera, Spoleto Opera. In 2012, he was the portrayed composer of the Radio France Festival Présences, a retrospective of his works in fourteen concerts at the Théâtre du Châtelet.
Luciano Berio awarded him the 2000 Orpheus Prize for his chamber opera Midea produced at the Teatro Caio Melisso in Spoleto in 2000 and at the Rome Opera in 2001. In 2007 he received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for Music Composition. He is the recipient of several prices like the Prix de la Musique Symphonique de la SACEM or the Prix George Enesco. He was a composer in residence at the Schloß Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany (invited by Hans Zender), at Herrenhaus-Edenkoben (invited by Peter Eötvös) and at the Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto, Japan.
He conducted the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orch. National d'Ile-de-France, the Bordeaux Opera, Ensemble Resonanz of Hamburg, Akademie für Alte Music Berlin and other ensembles. He was the Music Director of the Orchestre du Crous de Paris (1996–1998).
Universal Edition
Before I start a piece, I usually come up with a title, even if I have no idea what the piece will be about. The title serves as program and preliminary draft.
In this case, there was a request before the title: Jean-Guihen Queyras and Alexandre Tharaud asked me to write a duet for them to celebrate their twenty years of artistic collaboration. That was enough motivation. But before I could respond, the pandemic arrived and darkened the artistic sky.
Then came a second call from Jean-Guihen and Alexandre I thought they were going to tell me that there would be no more duet project. Instead, they told me to forget about the duet, that they wanted something crazier: a double concerto for them and an orchestra. I had already forgotten that orchestras even existed, but the suggestion got me thinking — the pandemic had at least one positive aspect, that we had time to think.
Too much time to think.
For months, the project was called Double Concerto — so was also our WhatsApp group called — but I wasn’t convinced by the title, and without a title I can’t start working, because the title is the project.
I started listening to double concertos. The one by Brahms, which I conducted many years ago, the one by Bartók for two pianos, the one by Lutoslawski, the one by Ligeti, mysterious and not at all virtuosic, the one by Stravinsky for two pianos, brilliant but without an orchestra, Beethoven’s spectacular Triple Concerto, Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. I couldn’t come up with any ideas. Until, thanks to the almighty algorithm, I came across Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola.
The first question was: Why did he call it a symphony and not a double concerto, when both forms meet the same standard? There had to be something else. And when I understood it, I realized what the challenge of my own project had to be: Mozart called it a symphony because there is no dialogue or conflict, at least not from the beginning, between the soloists and the orchestra, but actually the soloists are initially part of the orchestra, which at some point spits them out like olive pits and pushes them into the middle of the dance floor, so that, separated from the group of violins and violas, they become independent and take center stage. The orchestra is like a choir that expels soloists and then takes them back in, a trick I often use in my operas.
That had to be my project: the soloists had to come out of the orchestra — and in return, the orchestra also had to come out of the soloists. And I set to work.
In the first movement, Invocazione, the trumpets begin playing inside the piano (with the sustain pedal open), causing the strings to vibrate. Various ideas arise from this gesture, from the resonance. The rest of the movement is nothing more than the distribution of this initial energy, which explodes in all possible instrumental combinations, including the two soloists—it is an invocation of movement. There is something magical about music, because although it consists of individual notes thrown into the air by individual instruments, all of this creates a common movement, speed, and vertigo.
The second movement, Levitazione, attempts to evoke the idea of floating through lines that resist falling and a light framework of the orchestra that tries to keep the melodies in the air. Another lesson from Mozart: music naturally tends to fall into the depths, and the composer's task — almost the only one — is not to let it fall.
The third movement, a scherzo (called Scherzo), depicts a ping-pong effect between the two soloists, and the orchestra prolongs this effect by extending the resonances and sound trails.
The fourth movement is called Fontana and pays homage to the painter and sculptor Lucio Fontana, who is known for his cuts that bring a third dimension to the canvas in the form of an enigmatic hole. Fontana’s cuts are represented here by rapid glissandi.
The fifth movement, Finale, a finale, takes up motifs from the four preceding movements and combines them into a kind of crowning fireworks display.
Oscar Strasnoy