flute, clarinet, piano, vibraphone, violin, cello
Premiered by members of the Luxembourg Philharmonic, cond. Peter Eötvös
The decorative technique known as mosaic is a process in which an image is constructed from numerous small coloured tiles, called tesserae, separated by grout which fills the interstices, the spaces between the tiles. In tesserae...interstices, small motivic fragments from Berio’s Sequenza IX for solo clarinet provided the starting point for the tesserae, while I used the resonant characteristics of the vibraphone and piano, alongside the strings, to sustain and enlarge the interstices until they form their own textural world, quite removed from the original. The tesserae also undergo a process of timbral and harmonic distortion, to the point where they merge with the background material, decaying to a point of complete abstraction.
This piece was written for the Acanthes festival of new music in Luxembourg, and was performed by members of the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Zsolt Nagy.
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