The new release featuring works by Georges Aperghis invites listeners on a musical journey into the twilight zone between sound, language, and movement. With Tingel Tangel, Merry go round, Sur le fil, and Ligne de fissure, the French-Greek composer once again demonstrates his masterful talent for playing with identity, emotion, and abstraction. Between dance-like motor skills, mechanical disruption, and poetic fragility, music unfolds that challenges both the body and the intellect.
At the center are the accordion and—more rarely for Aperghis—the cimbalom. Both instruments create a connection to imaginary folkloric sound worlds reminiscent of Bartók, without being specifically localized. “I wanted the music to sound folksy without you knowing which country it comes from,” says Aperghis about Tingel Tangel, a series of whimsical miniatures with theatrical undertones – a homage to Schumann, circus characters, and cabaret abysses.
Die Sopranistin Angèle Chemin, der Akkordeonist Vincent Lhermet und die Cimbalom-Spielerin Françoise Rivalland verleihen der Musik durch ihr hochpräzises und zugleich expressives Spiel eine lebendige Mehrdimensionalität. Sie sind nicht nur Interpret:innen, sondern auch Mitgestalter:innen dieser „fragilen Dramaturgien“, in denen jeder Klang, jede Geste Teil einer intensiven Interaktion ist.
Whether in the reduced, suspenseful chromaticism of Ligne de fissure or in the fragile virtuosity of Sur le fil, the focus always remains on the human being. Aperghis' music is a balancing act between freedom and structure, between risk and poetry, full of humor, abysses, and a longing for expression.
A resounding portrait—musical, human, uncompromisingly unique.
Programme
Georges Aperghis (*1945)
Lignes de fissure
[01] Ligne de fissure for cimbalom solo (2008)
World premiere recordings
Dedicated to Françoise Rivalland
World premiere: 18 July 2008 Festival de Saintes, Église de St-Pallais
[02] Merry go round</strong for accordion solo (2019)
Dedicated to Teodoro Anzelloti
World premiere: 09 February 2020 ECLAT Festival, Stuttgart
[03] Sur le fil for cimbalom solo (2022)
World premiere recordings
Dedicated to Françoise Rivalland
World premiere: 07 July 2023 Festival de Cluny “D’aujourd’hui à demain”
[04–13] Tingel Tangel for soprano, accordion and cimbalom/ percussion (1990)
Dedicated Frédéric Davério, Valérie Philippin and Françoise Rivalland
World premiere: 26 April 1991 Théâtre Garonne, Toulouse
Total playing time: 56:19
Angèle Chemin, soprano
Vincent Lhermet, accordion
Françoise Rivalland, cimbalom/ percussion
Biographies
Georges Aperghis was born in Athens in 1945. He has lived and worked in Paris since 1963. His work is particularly characterized by its exploration of languages and their meaning. His compositions, whether instrumental, vocal, or for the stage, explore the limits of what is comprehensible. Aperghis' music is not strictly bound to the musical aesthetics of contemporary music, but seeks dialogue with other art forms—with theater and literature, the humanities and social sciences, and the visual arts. His works can be characterized by an extreme openness to the other. This otherness is combined with innovation by incorporating electronics, video, machines, automatons, and robots into his performances.
In 1976, Aperghis founded the musical theater group Atelier Théâtre et Musique (ATEM). For several years, he brought together experimental actors, singers, and musicians such as Édith Scob, Michael Lonsdale, Jean-Pierre Drouet, Annick Nozati, Martine Viard, and others in creative workshops. In the years that followed, he met many new performers and composed for them across generations. Since the 2000s, the most important European ensembles for contemporary music have worked closely with Aperghis, commissioning new works from him and including them in their repertoire (including Ictus Ensemble, Klangforum Wien, Remix Ensemble, Ensemble intercontemporain, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Neue Vocalsolisten, and SWR Vokalensemble).
Recent awards: Mauricio Kagel Music Prize 2011, Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale 2015 for his life's work, BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award 2016 (contemporary music category), Christoph and Stefan Kaske Foundation Prize 2016, Grand Prix SACD 2018, Ernst von Siemens Music Prize 2021.
“Aperghis has certainly earned the freedom to stand on the high wire, to risk falling. But the difference is that he knows that when the acrobat falls, he does not fall into the void: he falls onto other wires from which he can jump even higher! [...]”>
(Excerpt from L’hétérogénèse, interview by Félix Guattari with Georges Aperghis)
www.aperghis.com
The versatile artist and lyric soprano Angèle Chemin is a passionate advocate of contemporary music, opera, and the fusion of different art forms. Even as a child, she was involved in contemporary projects as an actress alongside her father, Philippe Chemin. She received lessons in flute, later studied opera singing with Elsa Maurus and Robert Expert, and completed additional studies with Malcolm Walker, Patricia Petibon, and Véronique Gens. Her expressive diversity and open-mindedness led to collaborations with similarly committed artists and other art forms, resulting in productions that combine repertoire and creative work. She works with composers such as Georges Aperghis, Roland Auzet, Mathieu Bonilla, Elise Dabrowski, Helmut Lachenmann, Michaël Levinas, Farnaz Modarresifar, Mikel Urquiza, Diana Soh, and Wilfried Wendling, and sings as a soloist at the opera houses of Bordeaux, Orléans, Lille, Limoges, Luxembourg, and Reims, at numerous festivals, in theaters, and with various ensembles and orchestras in France and Europe.
www.angelechemin.com
Accordionist Vincent Lhermet has pursued an extraordinary career as a soloist and chamber musician around the world. His activities encompass a repertoire ranging from the Renaissance to the present day, from written to improvised music. His pronounced penchant for experimentation has led him to collaborate with numerous composers, anthropologists, linguists, poets, and directors. He performs with numerous orchestras and ensembles (including the Orchestre national d'Auvergne, Orchestre philharmonique de Nice, Les Siècles, Le Poème harmonique, Les Musiciens de Saint Julien, Ensemble intercontemporain, Ensemble Court-circuit, L’Instant Donné, and Ensemble l’Itinéraire) and has won numerous awards from foundations and the most prestigious international competitions (including Arrasate-Hiria and the Gaudeamus International Interpreters Award). He has recorded CDs for the labels Alpha, Harmonia Mundi, and Tempus Clásico and has premiered over 80 new works. Vincent Lhermet is a graduate of the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, the Paris Conservatory, and the University of Paris-Sorbonne. He is a professor at the CNSMD in Paris and the first accordionist in France to hold a doctorate in performance. He plays a Pigini Nova “Avantgarde” accordion.
www.vincentlhermet.fr
At the age of ten, Françoise Rivalland discovered the music of Edgar Varèse, J. S. Bach, and later Pierre Boulez, Yoshihisa Taira, Georges Aperghis, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and György Kurtág... and became a percussionist. Ten years later, her passion for chamber music led her to co-found the Ensemble S:i.c, of which she was also the artistic director until 2008. For many years, she participated in the creation of numerous performances by Georges Aperghis and staged works by Beckett, Cage, Daumal, Globokar, Kagel, and Schnebel. In addition to her concert activities, she taught for twelve years in the Master of Composition and Theory – Music Theater program at the Bern University of the Arts. She is currently professor of contemporary singing at the DSJC/CRR in Paris. Alongside composers and in improvisation, she is currently pursuing her artistic path with cimbalom, tombak, and voice. For several years, she has been creating sound creations and electroacoustic works for concerts, exhibitions, and performances. She plays a cimbalom by Ákos Nagy.
www.francoiserivalland.com
