Hugues Dufourt, ensemble recherche

Inspired by frescos by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo painted in the residence of Würzburg, again two so rich universes of intoxicating sonorities. Let us quote the composer: “Nothing is more inclined to suggest space than color, which becomes the true mean of the musician”. Difficult to imagine two pieces as dissimilar as this Africa and this Asia. Tiepolo's allegorical depictions of Africa and Asia inspired the French composer Hugues Dufourt (*1943) to write two of his most powerful ensemble works.
As the nice booklet says:

Dufourt’s music is indeed the “composition of sound.” But it does not celebrate sound in a cloistered-off reserve: it confronts sound with the tensions of our modern world, with the Africa that is “already in the hands of the European exploit-ers,” with Asia as “a ghostly apparition of speeds, of turbulences, of unstable spaces.” Doing without picturesque set pieces, without pathetic texts and declarations of faith, Dufourt simply makes conflicts sound