Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001)
"Metastaseis A"
"Terretektorh"
"Nomos Gamma"

Orchestre de la Résidence de La Haye
Orchestre symphonique national de la RAI
Arturo Tamayo, direction

Les trois œuvres phares : Metastaseis, Terrektoh et Nomos Gamma enregistrées sur ce disque par Arturo Tamayo forment une bonne introduction à l’œuvre du compositeur d’origine grec Iannis Xenakis, à son univers quasi ésotérique basé sur des notions souvent abstraites voire tarabiscotées combinant dialectique et structure mathématique. Pas sûr que l’auditeur lambda s’y retrouve d’autant que la notice s’adresse plus au musicologue qu’au néophyte. Terrektoh et Nomos Gamma convoquent un orchestre d’une centaine de musiciens, disséminé parmi les spectateurs et constituent en concert une véritable expérience d’immersion pour ces derniers. Terrektoh (1966) renvoie à une expérience de solitude dans la nature où Xenakis s’imagine dans la peau d’Ulysse, livré à un univers mythologique fantasmé. Nomos Gamma (1967) est l’application musicale de théories mathématique des groupes et des cribles. Ce langage musical complètement novateur à l’époque peut aujourd’hui encore fasciner par sa structure implacable et sa brutalité sonore. Metastaseis (1953 54) l’opus magnum de Xenakis connut deux versions, la première fut jugée trop alambiquée par le chef allemand Hermann Scherchen et c’est finalement Hans Rosbaud en 1955 qui dirigea la création de la version révisée, quant à la version princeps elle dut attendre 2008 pour être crée par Arturo Tamayo. La partition connaît d’ailleurs depuis sa création un succès inaltéré. On y retrouve les principes de composition chers à Xenakis : Permutations algorithmiques, mobilité/statisme, espace éclaté/fusionnel, blocs sonores/fragmentations/fractales. L’œuvre est stupéfiante par sa force d’inspiration mais aussi déroutante, frisant souvent l’inaccessible et susceptible de laisser l’auditeur en équilibre instable au fil de l’écoute. (Jérôme Angouillant)

The orchestral works on this recording include two of Xenakis’ adventurous spatialized works along with Metastaseis, the work with which he emerged onto the international avant-garde scene. Metastaseis A is the original version, which is better known by its revision, Metastaseis B. The revision was the result of conductor Hermann Scherchen, who was critical of the size of the score and of elements of its instrumentation. He agreed to perform it if certain revisions were made. Ultimately, the première of the revised version, Metastaseis B, would be conducted by Hans Rosbaud at Donaueschingen in 1955, where it created a sensation. The public would have to wait until after the composer’s death before hearing the original version of Metastaseis A, which took place in 2008 in Torino under the direction of Arturo Tamayo, who conducts the work in this recording, its first commercial release. Xenakis explained that the sound world of Metastaseis was inspired by his experiences as a member of the student Resistance during the Nazi occupation of Greece. Terretektorh and Nomos Gamma are companion works. Both were composed in order to be performed with the orchestral musicians distributed in a large circle with audience members interspersed among the musicians. Both works feature a large string ensemble and complements of woodwinds and brass. The larger number of musicians in Nomos Gamma is due to an increased number of bassoons, trumpets, horns, and percussion. Terretektorh, which Xenakis referred to as a “sonotron”— essentially a musical particle accelerator — also references Xenakis’s own experiences of solitude in nature: “[A] shower of hail or even a murmuring of pine-forests can encompass each listener … the listener, each one individually, will find himself either perched on top of a mountain in the middle of a storm which attacks him from all sides, or in a frail barque tossing on the open sea, or again in a universe dotted about with little stars of sound, moving in compact nebulae or isolated.” Among the extraordinary effects in this work are hand-held percussion instruments played by the non-percussion orchestral members — whips, whistles, maracas, and wood-blocks — that help to convey the sense of the listener being buffeted by wind, rain, and hail. In Nomos Gamma, the listener is struck by the increased size of the percussion section, which rings the orchestra and audience, lending a kind of ritual brutality to the piece.