The soloists of the NFM Choir, together with instrumentalists conducted by Lionel Sow, will perform works by Kuba Krzewiński – a composer whose work focuses on touch as the origin of sound and the way it is perceived – as well as by the pioneer of spectralism Gérard Grisey.

“On counters and contrasts, points of contact and counterpoints, on positions and oppositions” is how Kuba Krzewiński describes the Contre No. 1 for cello and violin. His composition from 2016 will precede one of the most important works in the oeuvre of Gérard Grisey, a French composer considered a pioneer of spectralism. Over the years, Grisey honed his skills under the watchful eyes of Olivier Messiaen and Henri Dutilleux, as well as in a series of composition seminars with Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Ligeti and Iannis Xenakis – prominent figures of the twentieth-century avant-garde. Starting from the 1980s, he was associated with IRCAM, an institute for sound research, a place for developing technologies for the production and processing of sounds created by Pierre Boulez. The artist initiated the composing technique of spectralism, which consists in creating the melody and harmony of a given piece using the sound spectrum.

Les Chants de l'amour (Love Songs) for twelve voices and tape is the artist’s first big vocal composition. Created in the years 1982–1984, the work is a hymn about love, inspired by the novel Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar. In his piece, Grisey enables a dialogue between a living human voice and a tape with synthesized vocals. Among the sounds in various language variants, the words “I love you” emerge.