Ensemble Linea

The Linea Ensemble presents a varied programme of European music and composers who have been or are currently professors in the most important American universities: Brian Ferneyhough, Philippe Manoury, Georg Friedrich Haas, Tristan Murail, and Chaya Czernowin.

The texture of Ferneyhough’s Liber Scintillarum for six instruments begins with the highest density before gradually ebbing away to become punctuated with silences and shadows of figures, while in B-Partita (in memoriam Pierre Boulez) for solo violin and ensemble by Manoury, derived from Partita 2, the commentaries and counterpoints of the ensemble fit neatly into the interstices of the original score for violin and electronics.

The associations with minimal music are a key reference for Anachronism by Haas, but in the sense that in old newspapers photographs are essentially a rough grid of individual dots. In Le lac by Murail, the music looks to nature as a model for the play between what remains and what changes, the movements and the mood swings and the logic of the unexpected, whereas in Lovesong by Czernowin it follows the gestures of imaginary hands that touch the instruments in an attempt to reflect the strange energy and the flow of the moment when one falls in love.