Albums

The “Concert pour Debussy” project is the result of a collaboration of several years between the Antara Trio (Emmanuelle Ophèle on flute, Audile Auboin on viola, Ghislaine Petit-Volta on harp) and the composer and artistic director Benoît Sitzia.

This recording highlights extensive work on Debussy's Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp, begun in Avignon in collaboration with Pierre Boulez. It also explores the profound meaning of the unfinished cycle of the Six Sonatas for various instruments, which Debussy began to write between 1915 and 1917.

The sonata for flute, viola and harp, a veritable laboratory of Debussy's thought and poetics, contributed to the reputation of this chamber music group, inspiring numerous new works. The structure of this sonata, its references to French musical tradition, and its questions about modernist ideologies, inspired the construction of the program for this album.

The project revolves around the idea of the Baroque “concert”, with its nominative and imaginary tributes, echoing the poetic visions of Debussy, his contemporaries, as well as the composers of our time. It is a tribute made of tributes and images, exploring timeless and aesthetic connections of inspiration, highlighting a musical cosmogony that reveals not only what Debussy was, but also what he still represents today.

Presentation
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The character of this record is the result of the encounter of different perspectives on the music of Jean Philippe Rameau. The harp, with audacity, takes advantage of the harpsichord's writing, of which she happily corrected one of its characters; the brevity of the sounds. The transposition to the harp enriches the sound and enhances the polyphony of the suite of the 1st book of harpsichord pieces from 1706.
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Then La Fantasia by Camille Saint-Saëns (1907), which explains the latent and sometimes discreet lyricism of its artistic ancestor. It creates emotion; the fiery harp and the cardiac violin take our ears with conviction.
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As for Claude Debussy's sonata for flute, viola and harp (1915) it's another matter! Combining your three instruments is already the whole meaning of the adventure. Blessed are the daring. The presence of the viola offers the multicolored loquacity of its sound through the vocalizations of Odile Auboin. Finally, the pure, agile and colorful speech of the flute becomes vocal through the breath of Emmanuelle Ophele.

Presentation
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Pierre Vellones, whose real name is Pierre Edouard Léon Rousseau, is typically a composer of the “interwar period”, that of 14-18, in which he courageously participated as an auxiliary physician, and that of 39, who started some
weeks after he died. Musician, writer, painter and doctor, his originality lies in his independence from any school and in his search for new sounds. He was equally interested in the experiences of Cage and Mosolov (who sought to musically translate the movement of machinism and industrialism), as well as in the folklore of other continents. As a result, his keen artistic curiosity was attentive to all the latest developments in the field of sound, which he took advantage of with tireless creativity.
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In 1934, under the spell of a recent trip to Spain, Pierre Vellones, who brought back several watercolors made during his trip (including the one that illustrates this booklet), composed two piano pieces that he transcribed the following year for
flute, bassoon and harp under the name of “Impressions of Spain”. Here the aggressive tones of the flute by Patrice Bocquillon and the bassoon by Régis Poulain join Ghislaine Petit-Volta in a captivating dialogue.

A few years later, in 1938, he wrote one of his last classical works, the trio Op 94 for Flute, Oboe and Harp.
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The composer said that he would approach the major classical forms later, in his maturity. Alas! The life he loved so much was taken away from him before he heard his trio, which consists of three movements that are deliberately simple and melodious. Ghislaine Petit-Volta is accompanied by two musicians from the Ensemble Musique de Ville d'Avray, Patrice Bocquillon on flute and Jacques Vandeville on oboe.

The sonata for flute, viola and harp, by Frédéric Chatou on flute, by Diederik Suys on viola, two musicians from the Paris Opera Orchestra;

The three sonatas were created thanks to the publisher Jacques Durand, who succeeded in drawing the composer out of the isolation in which he had lived since the outbreak of the First World War. Debussy then envisaged a series of six sonatas for various instruments in the spirit of the pre-classical sonata in homage to the French masters of the 18th century.

Letter dated Oct. 6, 1915 from Debussy to his friend Bernardino Molinari
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My dear friend,
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Your good letter found me in a small corner by the sea, where I came to try to forget the war! and, for the last three months, I have been able to work again...
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Remember, dear friend, that I stayed for a year not being able to make music... Well, I almost had to learn it again. It was a discovery for me, and it seemed even more beautiful to me! Is it to have been deprived of it for so long? I don't know anything about it? What beauty is there in “alone” music? the one that is not a bias, a search to surprise the so-called “dilettanti”... The total emotion it contains cannot be found in any other art? that
The power of “harmonic implementation” that is so little understood, because we are still on the “march of harmony” and, rare are those who need only the beauty of sound? I dare to talk to you about this, to you who are sensitive, more than the “musicians” to this emotion that begins at this border, which they cannot cross...!
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... I have finished... a sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp; in the ancient form, so flexible, (without the grandiloquence of modern sonatas) .There will be six, with different combinations, the last one will combine the sounds used in

others... For many people, it won't be as important as a Lyric DRAMA... but it seemed to me that it would serve the music better

This project of the six sonatas was interrupted by his death in 1918 after the composition of the third sonata for violin and piano.

Philippe Ferro, Music Director of the Central Region Harmony Orchestra since 1992, initiated this adventure around creation with the orchestral instrumentalists, soloists and numerous composers:

We have therefore modestly but regularly enriched the repertoire for wind orchestra, thus promoting unforgettable encounters, marked by a fidelity that is particularly close to my heart. The aesthetics are very diverse and this
Live recording brings together some of these musical adventures, many of which were inspired by our relationship with nature and our environment. Musicians are therefore not disconnected from these issues.
which affect us all without exception.

About the work that concerns us, commissioned by Philippe Ferro for the 20th anniversary of the OHRC in 2002 and to commemorate the bicentenary of the city of Hue, classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO; Images of the time or images of the imperial city of Hue, Ton That Tîet tells us this: This city, where time seems to be suspended, with its forbidden city, its surrounding landscapes, and especially the famous “Perfume River” whose indolent curves make us forget about world affairs, is the source of several of my compositions. Writing for this course, which is unusual for me, I wanted to try another way of using sound colors. A musical work is also a painting. The main notes of the work are FA-LA, which represent “The Land of the East”, with Fa being the note corresponding to the element “earth” and LA, the note corresponding to the element “wood” or the direction “East”, according to the Yi Jin (book of Changes in Chinese Philosophy).

Ensemble Venance Fortunat directed by Anne Marie Deschamps (interpreter of medieval music, singer, musicologist, pedagogue and French composer who founded the Venance Fortunat ensemble in 1974, the first French a cappella vocal group specialized in medieval music).

In this second half of the 12th century, which saw the birth of so many masterpieces that were called Romans, it was at the court of Marie de Champagne (1145-1198) that Oïl's speech took on its letters of nobility, near Chrétien de Troyes. One should say the song of Oïl because the communication of this literature is still ensured here through vocal performance. I have to sing - to say, to bring what is written to life, for the sound to touch the other with its vibration, for silence to take on its meaning, so that “the ear of the heart” can hear.

Who are these songwriters? The troubadours who, encouraged to the court of Marie de Champagne, were, more than the troubadours, court people. They make the lyric of the troubadours who influenced them germinate in their fashion. They compose prints, rondeaux, funeral complaints, songs for canvas, meetings, crusades... motets for dancing, laughing, crying, telling stories, to kill time, to declare your love, to encourage yourself at the start, to encourage yourself at the start, to correct the world, to correct the world, to admire it, to pray... All the registers are gone through.

It is certain that in Guillaume de Machaut's monophonic plays, the singer was supported by the harp or the fiddle, according to the ancient usage of troubadours and troubadours. The harp accompaniment work that I undertook at the
Anne-Marie Deschamps' request around this program from Les Trouvères à la Cour de Champagne was a long learning journey. From listening to the songs,
From motets to improvisation everything had to be done because nothing was written for instruments in the Middle Ages.

I followed Anne Marie Deschamps's courses, which allowed me to experiment with this music on a modern lever harp produced by Camac.

By immersing myself in the pneumatic writing and the vocality of medieval singing, I was thus able, surrounded by the singers of the Ensemble, to reproduce the spirit of this music and to improvise on my instrument.