HYPER MATIÈRE

Program

Dragos Tara (1976* CH) HANT (2018, commissioned by HYPER DUO) for resonant bodies – 20’

Wolfgang Heiniger (1964* CH) Flutland (2018, commissioned by HYPER DUO) – for piano and percussion – 12’

Grégoire Lorieux (1976* FR) Brakhage miniature (2010) – for piano and percussionist playing inside the piano – 9’

Timothy McCormack (1984* USA) Traces that time leaves on built form (2012) – for piano and percussion – 12’

Arturo Corrales (1973* ES/CH) Icaco caído (2006) – for piano and percussion – 10’

Eric Wubbels (1980* USA) Doxa (2012-14)  – for prepared piano and prepared vibraphone – 15’

 

HYPER MATIÈRE presents the work of a generation of composers who voluntarily distance themselves from complex, mathematical musical structures. Rather, in combining sounds, each is the creator of a rich new palette of timbres; in this way, each composer creates their own hyper-instrument.

In Brakhage Miniature, where pitches played on the piano are prolonged by the percussionist who plays directly on the strings and the frame of the instrument, somber and erratic patterns define a harmonic trajectory before fading into the distance. The composer describes the work as “a metaphor for the perception of light.” 

Throughout traces that time leaves on built form, which uses only a minimal number of percussion instruments, Timothy McCormack creates a delicate, almost implicit musical language; the various layers of ‘micro-movement’ fuse to yield a unique and colourful texture, rather like one of Gerhard Richter’s abstract paintings.

Finally, while Icaco Caido, alternates between scurries of metallic sounds and strongly accented, tribal rhythms in a sort of death ritual, Doxa consists of a monolith which is held up with fluttering arabesques, of which the resonances undulate and metamorphose.

Amongst these works which evoke light, metal and stone, we commissioned two new works to Lausanne-based composer/improviser Dragos Tara and swiss Berlin-based composer Wolfgang Heiniger. These pieces will synthesize these matters within droney, magnetic and colorful sounds.

This program is presented with a light concept created by Pablo Weber.

The creation of this project was possible with the support of: