2 mins
People watching
Four personalities take centre stage in this new duet
BEAUTY FROM BROKENNESS: Rather than allowing these battered old violins to be thrown away, US artist Alicia Clare has used them as a canvas for her creativity. The self-described ‘colour-obsessed badass misfit rebel’ creates her artworks at Sunshine Studios, her atelier in New York. More of her creations can be viewed on her Instagram page at @sunshinestudios77 which also includes timelapse videos of the making process. Photos: Alicia Clare
COMPOSER Héloïse Werner
WORK close-ups
ARTIST Héloïse Werner (sop) Hae-Sun Kang (vn)
DATE 6 February 2024
PLACE Maison de la Radio et de la Musique, Paris, France bitly.ws/36qH5
Héloïse Werner
Hae-Sun Kang
WERNER PHOTO RAPHAEL NEAL. KANG PHOTO FRANCK FERVILLE
In close-ups, French–British composer Héloïse Werner’s new twelve-minute work for soprano and violin, we encounter four characters. ‘I love watching people’s behaviours and mannerisms,’ Werner says about how she came to choose them. The personalities brought to life by the voice and violin are an overly keen person, a posh and pompous British gentleman, a frustratingly negative character (Werner had in mind an infuriating admin worker), and a laid-back personality.
First the characters’ distinct motifs are introduced. For the keen person, the violin plays fast glissandos on the G string. For the admin character, there are ‘really boring motifs that are just repeated’. The posh character is represented by deliberately bad violin playing. ‘It’s as if they think they’re amazing, but it’s just awful!’ And the laid-back personality is depicted by a jazzy riff in 5/8 and 7/8 time. Each character’s entrance is signalled with a distinct sound: an egg shaker, book slam, bell ring and an energetic ‘hey’; for the laid-back, admin, posh and keen characters respectively. The characters’ interjections gradually shorten as the piece goes on, with the soprano line becoming more and more intense, until we are only left with their corresponding sounds. Song-like moments are dotted throughout the piece. The libretto, which was written by Werner’s sister Emma Werner, and is in both French and English, repeats the idea that you ‘don’t need a lot of words to bring a character to life’. It references the fact that the rest of the piece contains no words, only sounds.
The violin and voice are written as equals. Through different musical motifs they express similar feelings. As she will be singing in the performance, Werner explains that she enjoys the flexibility of the violin physically on stage, which allows her to be close to the player. ‘I’m really looking forward to doing it in front of an audience,’ she says. ‘Because, after all, the piece is about people.’