Friday, 25 May 2018
New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre
19:30
Ensemble 2e2m (France)
Conductor: Pierre Roullier
“Homeland and Homelands”
The program:
Nikolay OBUKHOV (1892-1954, year of emigration – 1918)
Dix tableaux psychologiques (1915)
for piano
Alexey SYSOEV (*1972)
Mon aimée, ma belle Irène (Premiere, 2018)
for voice and chamber ensemble
A text from “The Dairy and Letters from Prison” by Boris Vildé
Ivan WYSHNEGRADSKY (1893-1979, year of emigration – 1920)
Chant douloureux et étude (1918)
for piano and violin
Sergej NEWSKI (*1972)
votre MM (Premiere, 2018)
for voice and chamber ensemble
On texts from letters written at Ravensbrück concentration camp
by Elizaveta Skobtsova to her mother in Paris
Arthur LOURIE (1892-1966, year of emigration – 1924)
The mime (1956)
for clarinet
La flûte à travers le violon (1935) for flute and violin
Vladimir RANNEV (*1970)
Enfin je suis libre (Premiere, 2018)
for voice and chamber ensemble
On a text from a letter of Nikolai Obolensky to his wife Vera
from liberated Buchenwald concentration camp
on April 15th 1945 (translated into the French language by Marina Shelkunova)
Performers:
Jean-Philippe Grometto, flute
Véronique Fèvre, clarinet
Véronique Briel, piano
Léo Marillier, violin
Sarah Sultan, cello
Vincent Bouchot, baritone
The concert is dedicated to the tragic period of European history between the two world wars, when the dialogue and cultural cross-pollination of French and Russian culture were as deeper than ever. The artists who emigrated to France continued to create in their second homeland, many of them joined the Resistance during the Second World War. The concert program includes the works of Nikolai Obukhov, Ivan Wyshnegradsky, Arthur Lourie who emigrated to France after the 1917 revolution, as well as the premieres of new works by Vladimir Rannev, Sergej Newski and Alexey Sysoev, based on the memoirs of the heroes of the Resistance of Vera Obolenskaya, Elizaveta Skobtsova and Boris Vildé.
Ensemble 2e2m, one of the oldest and most outstanding French ensembles specializing in the performance of new music, was founded in 1972 by composer Paul Mefano. The initials characterizing the ensemble and deciphered as études et expressions des modes musicaux (studies and expressions of musical modes) function at once as both his acronym and a kind of manifesto of pluralism and openness. Needless to say that for more than forty-five years the ensemble has found its own fundamental approach to the development of new music and has allowed for many musical practices to emerge through its very existence.
During his long musical life 2e2m gave the public an opportunity to discover many French and foreign composers (the ensemble has more than six hundred premieres to its credit), several generations of performers have changed in the ensemble, which not only successfully performed, but also created a repertoire of some of the most significant works and allowed the ensemble to obtain experience and form a culture of performance.
The repertoire of 2e2m includes not only the full gamut of styles – from classical and modern to new music – but also essentially directed and concentrated on new forms of interdisciplinary and media art.
