Escaich: Le bal

Description

An empty stage, still bathed in a fading luminosity. At times, memories of past balls rise up with their cortège of clasping couples and pulsating, repetitive rhythms… Then this image blurs before being diluted in the initial still frame.

That is how one might describe this piece, taken from five Scènes de bal for string quartet and recomposed after the distant memory of Ettore Scola's eponymous film, The Ball. A waltz, a tango, a slow dance, and finally a more 'disco' number take shape on the level of the compositional material, then dilute in areas of expectation and transformation of the structural elements serving as liaisons between the different dances.

While the piece is characterized by clarity and vitality, as well as a certain representation of orchestral profusion, the dramatic climax will be the central part of the slow dance and its weighty ostinato bass overhung with a dense polyphony that will leave an indelible mark up to the work's denouement.

(Thierry Escaich) Translated by John Tyler Tuttle