Stefano Gervasoni (1962-)
"Lilolela", pour 23 musiciens
"Pas perdu", pour cymbalum seul
Douze sonnets d'après Le Camoëns, pour basse-baryton et grand ensemble

Frank Wörner, basse-baryton
Ulkho Ensemble Kyiv
Luigi Gaggero, direction

Avec ce titre à double sens (« j’ai perdu le pas » ou « je ne suis pas perdu »), Stefano Gervasoni joue sur l’ambiguïté de la perte, désorientation et opportunité, début d’un nouvel espoir. Ce morceau titulaire pour cymbalum solo est dédié à son interprète, Luigi Gaggero, par ailleurs chef de l’Ukho Ensemble Kyiv, à l’œuvre sur les deux autres ‘premiers enregistrements’ du disque. Lilolela, « un mot au sens perdu, dans un monde de mots qui cherchent le leur », captivante composition, en 7 parties et pour 23 musiciens, tire son nom du refrain de chansons italiennes du XVIème siècle, accolant syllabes pour créer des mots, avec ou sans sens. La pièce repose sur l’idée d’errance, qui sous-tend la pensée musicale de Gervasoni, en particulier cette intrigante « rotation » des éléments sonores, tant entre les parties qu’au sein d’elles. Dodici Sonetti Di Camões est le deuxième cycle, après Fado Errático, en référence à Amália Rodrigues, chanteuse populaire portugaise, d’un ensemble plus large (Com Que Voz), inspiré par le poète portugais Luis de Camões. On y suit l’évolution de la vie, dramatique autant qu’universelle, des peines amoureuses à la mort. Pas d’électronique dans ce deuxième cycle, mais guitare portugaise, accordéon ou dorma ukrainienne. (Bernard Vincken)

A lost step is the start of a new path, as suggested implicitly in the French language, where a step and the negative are written and pronounced in the same way: »pas«. In other words: loss is not (only) disorientation, but the chance to find a new way, to establish a new point of view. This is why my homage to Luigi Gaggero may be considered the start of a suite for cimbalom, an instrument dear to me and used various times in my works, or, duly accompanied, one of the future movements of my work in progress, Gramigna, a concerto for cimbalon and ensemble, a first version of which, in four movements, has already been presented to the public. The score of the Dodici Sonetti di Camões is one of the two cycles that combine into Com que voz, a work of large dimensions inspired by two founders of Portuguese culture: the ancient and of cultured extraction, Luís de Camões, and the recent and of popular extraction, Amália Rodrigues. The two cycles, for solo voice, large ensemble and electronics, interpenetrate in the original composition, having been conceived on the basis of a system of back-references, symmetries, overlappings, echoes and structural contrasts able to create a constant musical flux. And yet they are perfectly separable and can be performed autonomously, like two collections of Lieder in a cyclic form. So we have Fado errático, twelve fados inspired by the repertory of Amália, for fado singer, large ensemble and electronics, and Dodici Sonetti di Camões for baritone and large ensemble without electronics. The elimination of the electronics led to a series of modifications in the instrumental part, in particular in number 3 (»Correm turvas as águas deste rio«), but the order of the pieces stays the same, already forming in itself a dramatic path from the expression of the pains of love to philosophical abstraction and detachment as death approaches. This itinerary is entwined by a similar pathway, the one made up of the series of fados (proceeding from the realism of the first to the sublimation of the last). Also the instrumentation has remained common to the two cycles, thus including the folk reference of the Portuguese guitar, of extreme western Europe, and its east-European alter ego, the cimbalom, as well as other instruments of popular extraction like the accordion, and other percussion instruments, in addition of course to the classical instruments of the orchestra.