Domi EMORINE, composer

Tempête au Balajo (for accordion and string quintet)
a piece freely inspired by Beethoven’s  « La Tempête » Sonata

« August 18th 1937, it is a beautiful summer day which ends under the sky of Paris. It is 7 p.m. The heat is stifling. Beethoven leaves the Palais Garnier, exhausted by a long and chaotic rehearsal. He takes from his pocket a piece of paper on which is written the name of this good restaurant in the Bastille district, recommended by the solo cello of the orchestra, and rushes into a taxi.

A few minutes later, there he was walking down the de Lappe street under a fleeing sun when a few pearly notes hit his already deficient ears. It’s still early for dinner and the storm is threatening. The bourgeois-style Viennese therefore pushes the door of the dance hall from which this popular music tinged with swing escapes. At the back of the small room, barely visible behind the thick cloud of smoke, young Jo shakes his accordion in the ambient din, the clinking of glasses, bursts of laughter. Outside, the thick darkness of the clouds invaded the façades. The storm is here, the storm is going to rage…

Beethoven and Jo Privat, it’s an improbable story told here over three times, an impossible encounter that defies time, an irrational parenthesis that only music can offer beyond the realities of a life in which we are counted, the time. »

Domi Emorine