As opposed to the perspective of recent research, which treats the orchestral body as merely a framework meant to amplify expressive usage originally conceived for chamber orchestra or as an occasional medium onto which are transposed innovations generally originating with electronics, I intend to correct and renew the orchestral system. For me, this is not reduced to the neutrality of a sonic source indifferently available for a diversity of abstract constructions or preconceived aesthetics. To obtain maximum yield from the orchestra, the over perpetuated primacy of inappropriate writing must first be relinquished: scored counterpoint, colourist games or assiduous axiomatics. In that respect, the orchestra still seems to me today, an underexploited instrument lagging behind its potential. It seems to me that its real regime is in keeping with a tradition of energy that can only be found again through radicalization. All of the experience accumulated over more than two centuries and still in place must be clarified, assumed, formulated and translated into a specific order of restrictions, which will give us a new grasp on sonic phenomenon. Writing for the orchestra, means insistence in terms of dynamics, overview, and synthesis. Collective virtuosity is dependant on compositional virtuosity that must be inspiring. I was careful to reduce factors of inertia by playing on the continuous interaction of the instrumental ensemble. I tried to find a grammar adapted to this explosive, instable or evolutive material. None of the compositional principles derived from organizing pitches resists the molten orchestral mass. It is preferable to abandon all of our usual categories and take on a formalisation without categories, more in line with the mobility of the wagers and the hierarchies.
The title signifies a certain idea of time that I wanted to adapt to the orchestra: time of imminence, worry and fragmentation, time of a genesis that will also be conflagration, time of devastation and of liberation, a time without pessimism that, beyond the paradox and paroxysm, affirms its mastery and rediscovers its resources.

Hugues Dufourt

Recording

1 CD Timpani, TIM1C1112
Le Cyprès blanc - Surgir
Gérard Caussé (viola), Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Pierre-André Valade (conductor)