Creation on 5 November 2012, Fort Worth, Texas, Modern Art Museum, USA, by Trio Con Brio
Every composer has several periods in his creative life, where he explores different domains. This compositional period is, for Thierry Huillet, strongly influenced by jazz and blues, for a very specific reason: in 2012, he wrote a transcription for violin and piano of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. This was a real compositional work, which gave him a lot of satisfaction. For this reason, this year was imbued with the feeling of this masterpiece of the ‘classic blues’. He then wrote a string quartet, ‘Chevelure’, after a poem by Aimé Césaire, and then ‘Crisis’. Of course, the fact that the world premiere took place in the USA, by American musicians, certainly had an influence on his choice of style. The clarinet is also a reason to pay tribute to Gershwin.
The work was composed during a concert tour in France, then Argentina, Uruguay, Peru and finally London, during the crisis of 2012. Everyone was talking about the crisis, everyone was going crazy about it. All this, and the reasons for the crisis, seemed to Huillet a form of human absurdity. He decided to compose a satyrical, but by no means tragic, work illustrating the madness that was taking over the world.
“Speculation blues” illustrates, in a way, the genesis of the crisis: a dull threat that gradually grows. When you see it, it’s too late!
“Bubble”: the bubble flies gently over the city, accumulating volume, mass and strength, showing great humour until it… explodes!
And then?
“Crisis is nothing more than a musical work. So have fun playing it and forget about the crisis!