Lunch-Concert : Bruno Mantovani / Debussy

In partnership with Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, Théâtre du Châtelet is running a new series of concerts this season comprising a morning session reserved for schoolchildren and a lunchtime session for all ages. The format for both sessions is the same: a contemporary work or a ten-minute devised piece, followed by a discussion with the composer or a musician. Then, building on the insights gleaned from the discussion, the work is performed a second time and interacts with a major work of classical music.

Beauties of the sublimated commissioned work: it was in order to promote a new harp model patented by Pleyel that Debussy wrote, in 1904, two dance pieces of voluptuous elegance, where the instrument imparts all of its hues to a performance given by a string orchestra. Difficult to tune, Pleyel’s harp did not meet with the same level of success as Debussy’s Dances Sacred and Profane… Commissioned by the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris in 2017, Bruno Mantovani’s piece revisits Debussy’s work from a modern perspective. Dance again, and in complete freedom, in a movement “initially conceived as a harp cadenza alone. Then, in the orchestra, I imagined a texture that changed the sounds, almost as if I had composed a piece for harp and electronics,” explains the composer, going on “in fact, the ensemble also acts as a resonant instrument of the harp.”