Collège Néerlandais 85th Jubilé/World premiere of video’s film :

Celia SWART Our Patio

By Guillaume RUSCON (video) and Résonances XXI conducted by Olivier GUION

Our Patio is dedicated to the patio of the Collège Néerlandais building in Paris, designed by Dutch architect Willem Marinus Dudok. Written for flute ensemble Resonances XXI, the work tells the story of two people who fall in love. They are magnetised towards the pulsating, charged space that exists in between them. The patio forms a metaphor for this beating heart. The lovers spiral around it, facing each other from opposite sides of the patio. During the piece, they gradually converge towards the center and eventually, they enter the heart of the building for a deep embrace. In the patio they become one.

The music has two elements that translate this metaphor: the piece has two almost similar melody lines that are symbolic of the two people. They always play the same pitches but differ in texture. The melody line dissolves further in the piece into the flatterzunge textures of the flutes, which is heard from the start. The swelling flatterzunge klusters expresses the beating heart in the patio. During the piece, these swells become richer, as the longer one gets to know someone the richer, more detailed and deeper the relationship gets. The beating heart will sound different at times: sometimes flatterzunge, sometimes heavy vibrato in different rhythms. This shows the richness of the heart, looking at the patio from different perspectives can make us love more and more.

Work commissioned by Olivier GUION & R XXI with the support of Paris Dutch Embassy.