Composition : Jürg Frey
« During the last years the instrumentation together with soprano solo has become a passion, which allows me to express my most personal thoughts.
Starting in 2009 with Farblose Wolken, Glück, Wind, I surrounded the interior world and landscape of the poet Gustave Roud. This 50-minute composition was followed by I listed to the wind again. Here a text by Bai Juyi (772-846), fragments by Gustave Roud, Pierre Choutants, Etel Adnan and lists of words of myself were the basis of the composition. A third work deals with Emily Dickinson, also for soprano and together and with a duration of 50 minutes.
I do not consider these compositions to be musical adaptations in the usual sense of the term. I chose these texts and poets because they touch an existential side in me. As part of the new composition for the hiatus ensemble, I'm trying to continue this path. This time the poet Anne Perrier (1922-2017) is my companion. I discovered his work for the first time more than ten years ago. His work includes only poems, mostly quite short and still without title. The courts evoke in their clarity the Haikus:
Peace
You hold her in your hands.
Like a melon d'eau
Time going up around noon
Drop his shadow
In the night
But Anne Perrier also talks about the fragility of life:
Me trembling stem
Between two worlds
With this little
Strengths left to me
I shoot at my roots.
And hope to get rid of the dark shadows:
This song too heavy
Je laisse à la nuit son poids d’ombres
And the rest
I give it to space
Who gives it to the bird who gives it
With dazzling angel
I don't understand this new composition as a cycle of songs. It will rather be a path, which touches existential moments. The nomadic track is also one of Anne Perrier's most important volumes. This vision of a path that continues and is also the symbol of man's way of life will guide me in the work on the new composition.
There are already many connections between Anne Perrier's work and my music, which develops from wide and silent sound spaces. Both works are characterized by caution in musical matter, by an elementary sound that goes hand in hand with precision in compositional attitudes. »
Jürg Frey