Pépin: Énergie Blanche, bleu lointain

Description

This nonet is inspired by Fabienne Verdier's White Energy series. Strokes of white paint, like an opposite force, contrast with the smooth, rnidnight blue background of the canvases. From one painting to the next, this energy evolves into fluid or rough nocturnal ripples, light sparkles, vaporous clouds or even crackles. The paintings seem to be filled with a weightless material, and that is why I irnagined a floating music seeking a balance between movement and irnmobility. for me, the idea of vitality, strength, and light that inhabits the infinite and distant void of the sky emerges from this bicolour series.

I recreated this white energy through asperities (grains of material or frail touches of light) that disrupt these layers of vibrant, mysterious blue with long, extended values. My work was to imagine variations of these two material-colours thanks to the extraordinary palette of textures the string instruments provide. The piece is thus conceived as a colourful and hypnotic joumey in seven tableaux, each corresponding to a painting of Verdiers series.

Hors champ is a cold, nocturnal episode in which faint glimmers of light barely manage to pierce the darkness of the night. Ominous glissandi emerge from the violas and cellos in stereo, introducing the motif that will permeate the entire work. The double bass ernits an irregular and mysterious pulse in the distance.

A gentle, then majestic ripple rises in Ascendance. When the violins join in, it permeates the dark material, spreading its bright and lurninous beams.

Turbulence is where disturbances take place. Here the white energy made up of lively, chaotic particles is constantly disturbed and invades the space.

In Synchronie I the cellos share the founding motif of the work in a single, pure and suspended breath. Tuen, they unite to form a single voice, with a violin melody joining them. The latter heralds the light during this brief lull.

Mémoires du vent picks up the beginning of the work with the irregular throbbing of the double bass and the disturbing glissandi of the low strings. But these memories are also an echo of Turbulences which is transformed here into a Vortex in which the white, chaotic energy becomes a real whirlwind of liquid light.

To close the piece, Synchronie Il resumes Synchronie I with the colder and more mysterious colour of the violas, still in stereo. The touches of light from the high strings weaken before completely fading away, in the distance.

This piece belongs to the same cycle as my string quartet Feuilles d'eau de Silvacane inspired by Fabienne Verdier's eponymous series.

Camille Pépin