January 29th, 2011: Ensemble Intercontemporain

@cité de la musique

I really didn’t like the typewriter sounds at the beginning of Pierre Jodlowski’s Is it this?, especially with the unsubtle title and text. But I liked most of the rest, the sand on green steel barrel, the violin, clarinet and drums at the end. I’m pretty sure I missed the point of the music, as I most often do, but I did enjoy most of it. (As an aside, a composer once told me this kind of music was meant to be read more than to be heard, and I guess he should know because he was writing it. I can’t read music, so I gave up there and then on trying to understand it.)

I really went for Thierry De Mey, because I genuinely like his work and I feel I owe a lot to him for introducing me to a lot of music through his association with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Michèle Anne De Mey. I really liked Light Music, especially for its blurring of the lines between sound, light and movement. I couldn’t really say which was responsible for what I “heard”, whether some rhythms or some progressions. A bit like in a film he made years ago with hands drumming on tables, the distinction feels besides the point. These basic gestures/sounds assembled into changing phrases share a lot with dance — especially De Keersmaeker’s — but to me it was clearly music and not dance, even though it was music I could see as well.

To my big surprise, my favorite piece turned out to be Pierre Boulez’ Dialogue de l’ombre double. I was surprised because I have basically stopped listening to his music for a few years for personal reasons. And I had never heard it live. It makes a huge difference, because the recorded clarinet moves around in a way that just does translates to a record. And some of the trailing echoes of the live clarinet are so much fuller live. To me it was a very intense performance, and my lack of understanding never kept me apart. Despite the visual progression, I was still surprised when it stopped, maybe it’s the pace but I didn’t feel it had been even ten minutes long even though it lasted double that. I may have to reconsider my avoidance policy.

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