Clair-Obscur

Description

"The dreamer! This double of our being, this chiaroscuro of the thinking being," wrote Gaston Bachelard in 1961. "The old world is dying, the new one is slow to appear, and in this chiaroscuro, monsters emerge," continues Antonio Gramsci. Sandrine Piau has chosen to place these two quotes at the beginning of her new recording: "My close ones know this obsession that never completely leaves me. The antagonism between light and darkness. The chiaroscuro, the in-between..." This program, recorded with the Victor Hugo Orchestra conducted by Jean-François Verdier, conductor and super-solo clarinetist of the Opéra de Paris, indeed navigates between the cold Rhenish forest of Waldgespräch, a ballad by Zemlinsky composed in 1895 for soprano and small ensemble, the night of the first of Sieben frühe Lieder by Berg (1905-1908), the sun of Morgen by Richard Strauss, followed by the Four Last Songs, composed in 1948, of which the first two Fru¨hling (spring) and September (autumn) are also "the seasons of life," concludes Sandrine Piau.