In September, I attended the ‘Voix nouvelles’ residency programme at Fondation Royaumont (as evidenced by this splendid photograph) and in the process wrote All the time that you have what we have. / All the time that you have. for soprano Marie Picaut of Les Cris de Paris and Quatuor Diotima’s violinists YunPeng Zhao and Guillaume Latour. You can now listen to the recording of their performance given during the closing concert by clicking on the player above.
It is a somewhat unusual work for me in that its primary approach could be said to be one of drawing more on a performance art context. Though it remains music, the work gathers a dramatic aspect (that is possibly lost in the recording, I can’t tell) in being built around the exhaustion of breath and bow. The performers’ struggle to maintain presence and expression against natural physical limits shapes the sonic material, arriving at sound qualities that would probably otherwise be avoided, and — I think/hope — lends it a new meaning.
