Ustica

Description

The album Ustica is part of a story of loyalty and dialogue between a composer and a label. For twenty-five years, the Cypres label has accompanied Benoît Mernier's journey, with particular attention to the metamorphoses of his language and the affirmation of his writing. It will be released on the occasion of the premiere of his new opera, Bartelby, at the Opéra Royal de Wallonie. Ustica marks a milestone in this collaboration, painting the portrait of a composer and offering the testimony of a long-term artistic partnership. Ustica reveals a moment of maturity where formal rigor, poetry, and memory intertwine. The two symphonic movements contrast a contemplative adagio nourished by Baudelaire (Comme d'autres esprits) with a luminous and virtuosic scherzo (Sur un ciel immense), a joyful homage to Philippe Boesmans. Offering, for alto voice and ensemble, sets three spiritual poems by Rabindranath Tagore to music in a continuous flow between waiting, hope, and joy. The Deux poèmes for violin and piano, dedicated to Jacques De Decker, explore memory through a writing composed of bursts and fragments in a playful and cheerful spirit. Finally, Ustica, inspired by a poem by Octavio Paz, unfolds an orchestral meditation on life, death, and memory that oscillates between sun-drenched stillness and the mysterious fluidity of incantatory melodies.