One evening devoted to a monographic concert, two others to “musical wanderings” in the Mark Rothko exhibition, this is how Max Richter’s residency at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris is presented. Inaugurated in November 2023 then reproduced identically in January, the formula will see a final application from March 20 to 22.
Three works, performed by the Le Balcon ensemble, appear on the concert program. The first one, The Waves. Tuesday (2017), begins with an extract from Virginia Woolf’s last letter to her husband. Exhausted, the writer assures that she can no longer read or write. Music then makes you feel everything that cannot be said. The strings envelop the silence in a sort of down from which a melody emerges on the synthesizer or vibraphone. The instrumental material gradually expands and the orchestra, which resembled a frail skiff, becomes an immense liner which ends up disappearing behind the waves. Gorgeous. Monumental and minimalist like Unity Fieldsa creation inspired by the work of Mark Rothko, where the expression focuses on variations in texture.
“Musical offerings”
After the intermission is given Exiles (2015), stylized echo of the wanderings of migrants. A masterpiece of infinitesimal gradation, like the Bolero, of Ravel, and spiritual elevation, comparable to the 9e Symphonythe Beethoven.
The spectacular construction gives way to intimate communion under the aegis of the “wanderings”. Six singers, in one room, devote themselves to a disturbing incantation while six cellists, in another room, handle the bow like a paintbrush. These “musical offerings”, in the sense of Johann Sebastian Bach, do not leave us, because they are broadcast simultaneously throughout the exhibition space. Far from disrupting contact with the paintings, they allow us not to remain on the surface of a visual consideration and to immerse ourselves in the material as in the mind of Mark Rothko, of whom Max Richter then represents an authentic alter ego.