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It is the fourth generation of the Percussions de Strasbourg (two girls and four boys) who are on stage at the Cité de la Musique, celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of the Strasbourg phalanx and the centenary of Xenakis' birth. The two works on the programme, which they have just recorded on their own label, were written for the founders of the group and premiered alongside Xenakis ten years apart: in 1969 for Persephassa, revealed to the public on the grandiose site of the Apadana in Persepolis, and in 1979 for Pléiades, the timeless masterpiece heard at the start of the evening.
Xenakis, as a good sound architect, was always concerned with the nature of the material and the way in which the sound should circulate in space. For Les Pléiades, the audience is around the six percussionists positioned in a circle around the perimeter of the stage; it should be noted that the modular hall at the Cité de la Musique was reconfigured to meet the wishes of the visionary composer. The percussion sets for each of the musicians are relatively similar: keyboards, skins (bass drums, toms, bongos) and wood (temple blocks, wood blocks, etc.) as well as the sixxens (a word that includes the number six of the percussionists and the first three letters of his name) that he had built for the occasion. It is a metallic keyboard of 19 pitches tuned in quarter tones whose laryngeal timbre is reminiscent of the colours of the gamelan. In 1973, Xenakis travelled to Indonesia with a few friends (including Betsy Jolas, Marie-Françoise Bucquet, Toru Takemitsu, etc.) in order to better immerse himself in these new sound sources.
The six percussionists arrive on stage (and leave) running! The order of the score's four movements - Skins, Metals, Keyboards, Mixtures - being left to the performers' choice, it is with Mixtures that they begin, a place where the three percussive qualities intertwine and superimpose themselves. The Metals section is even more jubilant, with its pentaphonic background enchanting the resonances. The section reserved for the sixxens is the longest, the most sonorous too, the performers sparing neither their striking force nor the eardrums of the listeners (earplugs are distributed at the entrance to the hall as in noise concerts!): jubilation of the timbre, variety of dynamics and infinite spectrum of colours which are renewed according to the rhythmic configurations. The finale reserved for the skins has something wild and primal under the committed gesture of the percussionists: energetic rebound, deflagration, crackling and polyrhythm give rise to developments that are as complex as they are controlled, and which end up sliding progressively towards silence.
It is this same crackling of the skins, bewitching as much as telluric, to the exclusion of any other percussive material, which begins Persephassa , giving rise to a very successful light creation. As in Pléiades, Xenakis uses algorithms (sieve technique) to elaborate his rhythmic periodicity, guaranteeing the constant renewal of instrumental behaviour and temporal structures .
Persephassa (the archaic name for Persephone) was commissioned by Mehdi Bousheri for the Shiraz-Persepolis Arts Festival, which featured traditional music from all over the world (Xenakis heard music from Bali for the first time) as well as Western creations. The six groups of instruments were distributed in a circle among the remains of the columns of Darius' palace [...]," reads the history of the creation.
In the Concert Hall, the six musicians, all dressed in white, stand on the floor and surround the audience. More unexpected than Les Pléiades, the score spares eloquent silences, accentuates contrasts and reserves surprises: All these elements are brought together in a very colourful finale that brings into play the kinetic energy of a music that accelerates and a movement that goes wild (vibration of the thunder plates) until the famous "final turn" assumed by the toms in relay and the vitality of the gesture of our six percussionists giving to see as well as to hear the Xenakian whirlwind.
Michèle Tosi
