Sintonía

commissioned by Festival Presence Paris, Philharmonie Essen, Muziekgebouw Amsterdam, Transit Festival Leuven, with support from Pro Helvetia, SACEM and International Music Council.

Quatuor Diotima:

Transit Festival Leuven: 20 October 2019 / avant Première

Festival Presence Paris: 8 February 2020 / World première

Muziekgebouw Amsterdam: 20 March 2020 / Dutch première

Festival Now Essen: Oct 2021 / German première

Reflecting on the very nature of its heterogeneous constellation (four instruments all belonging to the same family, the family of strings), my first string quartet (« Adesso,» 2011) dealt with the topic of "family constellation." ( a ritual aiming at the many unknown and unspoken truths often lying within family bonds and relationships). The second string quartet, (« Pathos of distance,» 2017) focused instead on the relationship between the familiar and the "otherness." By embracing "stranger instruments" such as the Waldteufel (''poorer'' string instruments, employed in the piece to mirror and speculate about a perceived "poor otherness") the second string quartet embedded hence ethically and politically charged issues (such as the 2016 migrant crises in Europe). Reflecting back at such complex issues, my recent and third-string quartet (« Sintonía » 2020), aims at evaluating wealth and consequences of including the so-called "otherness" into our lives. That is, how the archaic, the so-called "distant" (what this otherness is often associated with) could become part of a reasonably meaningful dialogue within a notion of progress and intellectual advancement. Instead of refusing nor trivializing "otherness" (through banal or obnoxious forms of cultural appropriation), new cultural deontology based on an internal expansion of the soul could lead us towards a genuine proliferation of artistic outputs.

Oscar Bianchi