Professors | José-Daniel Castellon & Veronica Kuijken
16.07.23 > 11:00
> Fondation Louis Moret
Free admission
Description
On the cold mountains of Arcadia, writes Ovid in his Metamorphoses, lived a naiad: her name was Syrinx. She was beautiful, vivacious and, to her misfortune, pleased Pan in the forest. To escape the god’s ardor, she turned herself into a reed on the banks of the river. From the fragile stems swayed by the wind, the frustrated lover made a flute: “thus, my conversation with you will last forever”. An instrument of flight, the flute carries in its imaginary world the burn of desire and the sorrow of absence, exaltation and mourning. For in Pan’s eyes, the reed is the body of Syrinx, tangible at last beneath his mouth, yet inaccessible.
This eroticism, at once violent and funereal, fascinated the authors who, from the end of the 19th century to the 1920s, gave life to a “fin-de-siècle” art form steeped in symbolism, sometimes going so far as to call itself decadent. Gabriel Mourey, a playwright and friend of Debussy, asked the latter to compose incidental music for his play Psyché, whose Act III depicts nymphs moved by the sensual accents of the syrinx:
But Pan begins to play his flute again…
It seems that Night has untied
Her girdle and parted her veils
She has let all the stars
All the stars to fall to earth…
Sweetness
Voluptuous sweetness scattered through the night…
Around the remarkable flute solo that Debussy conceived for the piece, soberly entitled Syrinx, José-Daniel Castellon and Veronica Kuijken have brought together a number of pearls from this repertoire, which, at the turn of the century, offered the instrument one of its golden ages. Nature, love and death are all transfigured by the grace of the breath, and the echoes of ancient myths resonate for us.
Enjoy !
Program
A. Caplet / Rêverie & Petite Valse
M. Ravel / Sonate posthume M.12 (arr. José-Daniel Castellon)
G. Fauré / Fantaisie pour flûte et piano, Op. 79
P. Taffanel / Andante pastoral et Scherzettino
C. Debussy / Syrinx pour flûte seule, C.D. 137
M. Pilati / Sonate pour flûte et piano
Artists
Concert venue
Chemin des Barrières 33
1920 Martigny
Switzerland