Staged concert(o)
Premiere
31 May 2018
Location
Sentralen, Oslo
“Any story can be told in one sentence…
Aleksi Barrière, “Not a Knight”
But then where’s the pleasure?”
A laboratory for the performance Between, this concert program, which has undergone several iterations, combines Kaija Saariaho’s violin concerto Graal Théâtre in its new version with actor (featuring Aleksi Barrière original text Not a Knight, written to be spoken in the interstices of the concerto), with orchestral works by Saariaho and/or Richard Wagner that resonate musically and thematically with this centerpiece. In both composers’ sound worlds, the drama is gradually revealed in force fields drawn by troubled harmonic lines and emotional shimmers, in a quest that is understood to be one only once it’s over.
Creative Team
Concept and Realization
La Chambre aux échos
Text, Staging and Video
Aleksi Barrière
Musical Direction
Clément Mao-Takacs
Co-Stage Design and Lighting
Étienne Exbrayat
Cast
Actor
Thomas Kellner
Solo Violin
Peter Herresthal
Performance History
21 May 2018 (premiere of the chamber version)
Graal Théâtre with works by Wagner and Debussy
with Secession Orchestra in Paris
31 May 2018 (premiere of the symphony orchestra version)
Monographic Saariaho program (recorded by the label BIS)
with the Oslo Filharmonien at Sentralen, Oslo
9 October 2018
Graal Théâtre with works by Wagner and Saariaho
with the Stavanger Symfoniorkester at the Stavanger Concert Hall
11 February 2022 (concert version with text)
Graal Théâtre with works by Wagner and Saariaho
with the Copenhagen Phil in Copenhague
Echoes
21 August 2018
“Aleksi Barrière has written a text that is poetic, associative, tempestuous, and even apocalyptic in its most dramatic parts. (…) The actor conjures up images, words and thoughts. It’s as if he’s clarifying the music, but at the same time creating meaning and expressivity on his own terms. (…) Clément Mao-Takacs’s sensitivity to the refinement and detail of sound allows the orchestra to glide and sparkle. (…) It’s only rarely that a greater number of elements brings greater clarity, but that is what happens here. Together, the visual and the sonic give birth to a modern ritual.”
Bodil Maroni Jensen, musikkjournalistikk.no