Work
burlesques mécaniques
ten miniatures for piano trio
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About
burlesques mécaniques is a rather extroverted collection of grotesque miniatures whose characters are not people or animals but dances. These dances have been mechanised, electrified, and often obscured by their own rhythmic impulse. Old forms and formulaic tropes are given new identities, freed from the confines of metric stability and the expectation that they be "danceable". The essentially mechanical, artificial aspect of music (and of art in general?) is embodied in the piano, here a brittle, seedy protagonist whose string limbs hover and flail about it. Conflicting rhythms dominate the surface, oscillating between insistent repetition and mad, angular flourishes. The generally jerky, muscular rhythmic material is periodically frozen throughout the work, most strikingly in the ninth movement (chain). Here a string of rich, impressionistic chords briefly reveals an alternative, interior world which is then rudely dismissed in an almost haphazard finale.
Commissioned note
Commissioned by the NZTrio with funding from Creative New Zealand
Contents note
I. prologue
II. (d)rag
III. interlude
IV. a spanner
V. tumbledry
VI. gas / sisyphus
VII. tic
VIII. anglegrinder
IX. chain
X. scaffold
Performance history
14 Oct 2012: Performed by the NZTrio at St Peter’s Church, Rue Balguerie, in Akaroa.
16 Oct 2012: Performed by the NZTrio at the Chamber Gallery, Rangiora Library, in Rangiora.
18 Oct 2012: Performed by the NZTrio at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, in Dunedin.
28 Oct 2012: Performed by the NZTrio at Loft at Q, 305 Queen Street, in Auckland.
31 Oct 2012: City Gallery - NZTrio
15 Nov 2012: NZTrio in Turkey - Asian Composers' Festival
17 May 2014: NZTrio | new New Zealand music - Beijing Modern Festival
30 Aug 2014: NZTrio | Aarhus Festival
31 Aug 2014: NZTrio in Copehagen
05 May 2015: CMNZ Composer Connections | NZTrio in Nelson
07 May 2015: CMNZ Composer Connections | NZTrio in Palmerston North
08 May 2015: Chamber Music New Zealand | A Residency in Wellington
09 May 2015: CMNZ Composer Connections | NZTrio in Wellington
15 May 2015: Chamber Music New Zealand | A Residency in Hamilton
22 May 2015: Chamber Music New Zealand | A Residency in Auckland
09 Sep 2021: NZTrio | Dramatic Skies: Cumulus (Christchurch)
01 Oct 2021: NZTrio | Dramatic Skies: Cumulus (Wellington)
10 Oct 2021: NZTrio | Dramatic Skies: Cumulus (Greytown)
13 Oct 2021: NZTrio | Dramatic Skies: Cumulus (Pah Homestead, Auckland)