French Musicatreize plays with music and words

French Musicatreize plays with music and words

By Izabel Deuff

JAKARTA (JP): For superstitious people, "thirteen" is usually
considered a number signifying misfortune. As far as Musicatreize
(music played by thirteen people) is concerned, the number has
brought it luck.

After performing in prestigious places such as the Theater of
Champs-Elysees in Paris, the National Auditorium of Music in
Madrid and Grenade and the Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow, the French
instrumental and vocal Musicatreize ensemble will play for the
first time in Asia for Art summit Indonesia II, 1998: Performing
Arts.

The ensemble has been honored several times by French music
critics and awarded some distinctions for its performances and
recordings.

Founded in 1987 by Roland Hayrabedian, Musicatreize is
composed of a core of 12 soloists but can welcome 16 to 24
singers, depending on the pieces it plays.

Thanks to this protean and flexible structure, the
Musicatreize repertoire ranges from baroque to contemporary
compositions: it includes Maurice Ohana's Nuit de Pouchkine
(Pouchkine's Night), La Puerta de la Luz (The Door to Light) by
Patrick Burgan, Cinq Rechants (Five Songs) by Olivier Messian, as
well as the 14th symphony by Dimitri Chostakovitch.

Conducted by Hayrabedian, Musicatreize will perform a program
entitled Humoristique at Taman Ismail Marzuki Art Center in
Central Jakarta, on Friday and Saturday.

"The name of the program chosen for the Indonesian Art Summit
is Humoristique because its pieces are "music to play with",
pieces which play on words, vocal feats and echoing effects",
said Marthe Lemut, in charge of public relations for the
ensemble.

Concentrating on compositions from the 20th century,
Musicatreize was honored to be invited by the festival which is
"obviously very open-minded about foreign ensembles", said
Marthe.

She added that playing a contemporary repertoire is a way to
make this music more widely known to the public.

Albeit Hayrabedian is well known for interpreting Maurice
Ohana's music, whose consecration of its success comes from the
opera La Clestine (1983). This concert will not display any of
his works but those by Luciano Berio, Luigi Dallapiccola,
Goffredo Petrassi, Annette Schlnz and Ivo Malec.

Of these five composers, Berio is the most famous. Born in
1925, this Italian musician is famed for his works combining
lyric and expressive musical qualities with the most avant-garde
electronic techniques. Musicatreize will perform his Cris de
Londres (London's Cries).

Berio was greatly influenced by Luigi Dallapiccola (1904-
1975), another Italian composer who was his teacher in the 1950s
in the United States. His vocal works are famous for being
written in Latin and for the imaginative effects of pronunciation
that Musicatreize will demonstrate singing Due Cori di
Michelangelo Buonarotti (Two Chorus of Michelangelo Buonarotti)
by this composer.

The ensemble will also participate in the Nonsense of Petrassi
who set poems by Edward Lear to music. His pieces are plays on
voices and are reminiscent of the Commedia dell'arte tradition.
The following is one of the epigrams they will sing:

It was an old woman in Pozzillo

Whose chin ended in a pin point.

She had it filed for many hours,

Bought a harp

And played with its chin everywhere in Pozzillo.

Ornithoposie, dating from 1989, is also poetry set to music.
Schlnz chose to compose music for Pierre Garnier's poems: this
piece is made up of 13 songs using five to 11 different tones and
favored murmurs, whisperings and breaths.

Musicatreize will close the concert by performing Dodcameron,
a piece composed in 1970 by Malec. As the title suggests, it is a
piece for 12 people and is divided into 12 parts. But Ivo Malec
explained that "the most important person is the 13th one who
conducts the piece." He added that "a kind of playful spirit,
free and improvised may be understood in some parts of the piece
as a tribute to Boccaccio (an Italian poet from the 14th century
who wrote Decameron)."