(Paris 1961)
NEWS
Grand Prix of Music Symphony SACEM 2006 and named the "Victoires de la musique classic" four times in 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2008, Nicolas Bacri, born in Paris in 1961, is the author of more than one hundred and ten partitions including six symphonies, six cantatas, ten concertos (for violin (3), for clarinet (2), Trumpet (2), for cello, piano, flute) and many other concert works (Requiem, Folia, Sinfonia Concertante, Concerto Nostalgico, amoroso Concerto, Une Prière, Divertimento, Nocturne, Notturno etc ...) for various instruments and eight string quartets, four piano trios and a number of sonatas and suites for violin, viola and cello and eleven motets for choir. Among the recent successes that confirm the distinctive place of N. Bacri in a new generation of French composers including his Concerto tenebroso (Winter), joint command of the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris and the Gävle Symphony Orchestra for François Leleux, created at the Theatre des Champs- Elysees in January 2010 and again in Gävle (Sweden) the same year, Entre terre (dedicated to miners and former miners from around the world) for narrator and orchestra, choirs, commissioned by the Orchestre de Douai, created in November 2009, the Sixth Symphony op. 60, written in 1998 at the request of Radio-France and recorded by the Orchestre National de France under the direction of Leonard Slatkin (taken over by the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Daniel Harding in 2003 at the Royal Festival Hall) and his Divertimento op. 66, for piano, violin and orchestra, commissioned by the City of Paris, created by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Pascal Rophé at the Theatre du Chatelet, broadcast live on France Musique and TV (2000) taken in 2006 for the same time Salle Pleyel with the same partners. In 2002, his work, Une Prière, in its version for violin and orchestra, is registered by the company RCA (BMG), with Laurent Korcia and the WDR Symphony Orchestra of Cologne under the direction of Semyon Bychkov, which in stride, orderd from N. Bacri's 3rd Violin Concerto op. 83, created, recorded and televised (Germany) in November 2003 by the violinist Mirjam Tschopp from Zurich. It's yet again Germany, which lead to the creation of his Concerto amoroso (Spring), dedicated to François Leleux and Lisa Batiashvili, the joint command Alte Oper Frankfurt and the Tapiola Sinfonietta (Helsinki), in March 2006 and its Capriccio for three violins and orchestra op. 118, command of the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden in July 2010, while the years 2002-2010 have been marked by an ongoing collaboration with the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris which he is the associate composer from 2009 to 2011, the Festival of Forests ( Compiègne) where he is in residence from 2010 to 2012, the Tapiola Sinfonietta (Helsinki), the Orchestre de l'Opéra de Massy (Dominique Rouits), Ensemble Matheus (Jean-Christophe Spinosi), Orchestre de Bretagne, "Ensemble-Orchestra of Lower Normandy" (Dominique Debart), the Ensemble instrumental "La Follia", the Choir Mikrokosmos (Loïc Pierre).
TRAINING AND CAREER
N. Bacri begins with learning the piano at the age of seven and completed his training by studying harmony, counterpoint, musical analysis and composition with Françoise Gangloff-Levéchin Christian Manen and then in 1979, with the composer of German origin Louis Saguer. In 1980, he entered the Paris Conservatory where he will receive the teachings of Claude Ballif, Marius Constant, Serge Nigg and Michel Philippot. He left the Conservatory with the first prize for composition in 1983 and became a two-year resident at the Academy of France in Rome (Villa Medici) not without studying in private, the technique of conducting with Jean Catoire, a disciple of Leon Barzin. He also participated in master classes of Franco Donatoni and Brian Ferneyhough organized by the Paris Conservatory in 1983 and received the advice of Gilbert Amy, Elliott Carter, Henri Dutilleux and Emmanuel Nunes.
In 1987, Radio France appointed him the position of Artistic Director of the service chamber music. He abandoned this business in 1991 to devote himself entirely to the new composition by becoming resident at the Casa de Velasquez (until 1993). Supported by the Foundation's Corporate Credit National (now the "Banque Populaire") from 1993 to 1996 he lived in La Pree (Indre) at the invitation of the Cultural Association "Pour Que l'Esprit Vive" in 1993 in 1999 and won numerous awards including the Grand Prix of the Académie du Disque in 1993 and several awards from SACEM and the Academy of Fine Arts for the whole of his work. First guest composer of the French Symphony Orchestra (direction Petitgirard Lawrence) was appointed " residing composer " at the Picardy Orchestra by Louis Langrée for which he wrote his 4 and 5 Symphonies, then Xavier Delette for he wrote his cantata 5 °, created and recorded by the Orchestre de Bayonne-Côte Basque, where he lived from 2001 to 2006. In 2005 he was appointed professor of orchestration at the Conservatoire / High School of Music in Geneva where he resides from 2006 to 2007. Composer associate the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris (2009-11) and residing composer at the Festival of forests (Compiègne) (2010-12), he lives in Brussels since 2007.
Since the creation of his first Violin Concerto (Op. 7) in the series of concerts for Radio-France "Perspectives of the XX Century" (1985), programmed by Harry Halbreich, N. Bacri has received regular orders from Radio France, the Ministry of Culture and numerous orchestras, soloists and French and international festivals.
"A time anchored in a post-constructivist aesthetic webernienne culminating is his Symphony No. 1 devoted to Elliott Carter, his music has gradually returned from his Cello Concerto of 1987 (dedicated to Henri Dutilleux),with the melodic continuity with the predominant aesthetics of the postwar had evacuated. Far from being a regression in the sense of Adorno's term, this shift is helping to register N. Bacri in the aesthetics of his time, an aesthetic of reconciliation. "(Philippe Michel, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2001 edition).
NOTICE
all'ungarese Sonata (Introduzione: Adagio - Allegro veemente) - Notturno (Lentissimo ipnotico) - (attacca :) Variations and Fugue on a Minuet by Haydn: Tema (Menuetto ma non troppo presto) - Var. I (Misterioso) - Var. II (Inquieto) - Var. III (Con spirito, alla passacaglia) - Var. IV (Subito drammatico, poco meno mosso) - Var. V (Andantino grazioso e sereno, quasi una serenata) - Var. VI (Allegro alla fuga) - Var. VII (Epilogo: The istesso tempo - Quasi metà movimento, Adagio - Presto con bravura). A Georges Zeisel
"I have been much concerned throughout my composing life with two of these forms, the symphony and the string quartet. The first is a public form, the second private, but they share the same Classical archetype, Which is so well-known that almost everyone who listens to music will have some notion of what a symphony or string quartet should be. According to Hans Keller's useful theory, the richest kind of musical experience is provided by "the meaningful contradiction of expectation." This assumes that the listener will have some idea of what to expect, so that he will be pleasurably surprised by the contradictions that an inventive composer will provide . If on the other hand to attempt to be wholly new, then no real surprises are possible. To write a movement in sonata form is somewhat daunting, as you are competing with - and almost inevitably failing to equal - the many supreme examples of such movements from the past. But it gives you access to a world where meaningful contradiction has-been practised for two-and-a-half centuries, and although many of the devices of confounding expectation have been over-exploited and have themselves become clichés, it is not impossible to renew them by inner conviction; and there are still new games to play."
David Matthews Reviving the Muse: Essays on Music After Modernism, edited by Peter Davison, Claridge Press, 2001
By this quote from a short text (which I could have written word for word, but here I simply translated) from one of my most esteemed British colleagues, David Matthews, author born in 1943 and to date, six of eleven symphonies and string quartets, I would like to begin this introduction to my String Quartet No. 8, subtitled "Homage to Haydn" in this year where we celebrate, and rightly so, the great Viennese composer. Viennese Classicism has always intrigued me, even in the days when I grew to distrust him, which for my young age, seemed perfectly legitimate. Classicism as I perceived at the time was synonymous with order and balance on the one hand, courtesy of face and other affectations, all values exceeded the frenzied revolutionary as I thought then, and which could logically lead to a deep boredom ...
After a period marked by the post-serialism, where I avoided to use classical forms of music while trying to soak up the rigor of their principles for the formal experiments of another kind, I was led to reconsider them gradually from the inside (from my Symphony No. 2, op. 22, 1986 to 1990) to revisit the first frontally "the" archetypal form of classicism, the famous "sonata form" in a work ostensibly neo-classical, my Symphony No. 4 (Classical Symphony "Sturm und Drang", op. 49, 1996) and from there, trying to define what could be a timeless classic (which speaks without naming David
Matthews in the quote highlighted). This timeless classic is not the neo-classicism that some minds would like it to be simplistic but "something more complicated" to quote our friend Georges Zeisel which this work is dedicated, to when he told me his impressions after the hearing of my seventh quartet (Serious Variations op. 101).
To summarize schematically (and recalling that I deepened the question in my book, Notes Etrangère) I will just point out that the concepts of neo-classicism and a temporel classicism,are from my point of view, not only different but opposite, since the first characterizes classicism to show the impossibility of true restoration, while the latter is engaged in settling a job that highlights the most lively aspects and therefore actual, the process of writing found in music since the classical period.
Faced with the challenge of this command for a quartet as a tribute to Haydn I had two options: write a new neo-classical work, in the vein of my Symphony No. 4 or my recent Diletto classico, piano, or opt for the timeless classic that characterizes most of my music for over twenty years now ... For me, the neo-classicism as I understand it only offers a limited value in itself (not to mention its over-exploitation in the twenties and thirties which makes it "historical") and Ionly use it when I feel the need for total immersion in the tradition that is to say, rarely ... This immersion not to be fatal (I mean by "immersion fatal" one that would result in the complete disappearance of ones own musical personality) must be used, it seems to me, with the greatest precaution in this case under the greatest paradox possible, as this is to immerse oneself at the same time taking the maximum distance from the object in which to immerse oneself! And this distance is the stylistic shift that is obtained, which is not without consequences ... So the source of mischief and even irony that characterizes the aesthetic neo-classical ... But the mischief of Haydn is something essential! The line was stretched to me and tightend ! Well I took it in my own way! I decided that I will pay tribute to Haydn's humor and also, and above all, his sense of surprise, but ... as seriously as possible (!) and not referring to neo-classicism and only occasionally as a "quote style" although absolutely integrated into all ... "Complicated", indeed!
The work, which began Sept. 9, 2008, and ended 1 March 2009, opens with a sonata-form movement titled all'ungarese Sonata (Sonata in Hungarian blink -Eye to the period of Haydn Estherazy) preceded by an introduction based on the rather dark intervals obtained by the sequence of notes corresponding to the English notation letters H, A and D (Haydn). The allegro follows with a classic and dancing theme at the same time quite dramatic. The second theme, more expressive, occurs only after a measure of silence. This measure of silence, a tribute to the genius of Haydn's surprise (and anticipation of the extent of silence that will appear in the minuet of the Austrian composer who will be subject to variations in the third movement of my quartet), will return to close the exposition and close the development. It plays the role of a tag as much as it dramatizes the formal in a fun way. The recapitulation the first theme returns and typically forks after twenty measures of new development. The measure of silence returns one last time just before the recapitulation of the second theme, transposed as it should, in the "tone" of the first theme and the movement ends briefly with a recall some what mischievous the main reason for the first theme.
The second movement, entitled Notturno, is a kind of simple Aria which surprises us with its unexpected modulations, but whose main function is to allow maximum relaxation after the dramatic intensity of the first movement and before the final shape variation that follows. The theme of Haydn, the minuet in D minor, the last string quartet (unfinished), published as op. 103, the musician Estheraza, feeling his creative forces leaving him, wrote shortly before permanently ceasing to compose in 1803, some six years before his death. Note that if this is not the first time I've written variations on a theme of a famous composer it is the first time I dared to present at the beginning of the work. " br /> In other compositions of this kind I always hear the theme at the end. Here I took the enormous risk, of passing after the master and continuing with five variations (to play the Scherzo in the whole of the quartet), which are all taken with little minuet with variations on this theme in a light one after the other turns mysterious (Var. I), worried (Var. II), humorous, shaped Passacaglia (Var. III, con spirito, alla passacaglia), dramatic and passionate (Var. IV), gallant (Var. V Andantino grazioso e Sognando, quasi una serenata) before arriving at a sixth form of runaway change (making its final act), the subject of seven measures, starting from C minor (rather than C minor), is itself an motivated resumé not only the theme of Haydn but of the whole quartet giving to this flight the function of a great treminaldevelopment .
If this flight follows quite well the pattern of the school flight with its tonal logic assumed, it gives us the surprise of a stretto-cons on the subject before a paraphrase of the theme of Haydn in C minor and giving rise to a new thematic work, and slow cantabile, before a Presto con bravura, the last several issues, leads to a unison of the four instruments on the head of the theme and the brilliant conclusion of the quartet on the main motive of the first movement sweeps everything before it to
conclude triumphantly in D Major.
Nicolas Bacri, Brussels, March 2009
