Thibault PERRINE, composer

In Memoriam (for accordion and string quintet)
a piece freely inspired by Beethoven’s Symphony n° 7

« April 12th, 1945. On the evening of his life, old Richard Strauss put an end to one of his last masterpieces, Les Métamorphoses, a sort of twilight lament of almost half an hour entrusted to 23 soloists strings, like so many voices from a great lamentation choir. On the last page, a quote from Beethoven’s Funeral March from the Symphony n°3, and the words “IN MEMORIAM! added by hand… As if, on the ruins of civilization, after more than twelve years of Nazism and the final collapse of his country, Strauss had felt the need to recall here what had brought art to the highest and German culture, in the early hours of romanticism, when the humanism of a Goethe or a Schiller still seemed to be able to change the world.

In Memoriam… Composed from elements taken from the Allegretto from Beethoven’s symphony n°7 (the other funeral march) to celebrate the 250th anniversary of his birth, at a time when barbarism seems more than ever to take over our old continent that we thought was safe from wars, this piece is a modest tribute to the victims of modern barbarism, here embodied by an incessant knell and the eight notes of an obstinate motif. Eight notes, like so many letters of the name of a place that has forever become a symbol of suffering, atrocity, mourning… »

Thibault Perrine

Thibault Perrine in a few lines…

Born in 1979, trained at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris with Jean-Claude Raynaud, Thierry Escaich and Jean-François Zygel, Thibault Perrine first became known as an arranger, before devoting himself to the composition following his meeting with Félicien Brut in 2016.

For his Pari des Bretelles, he composed Suite Musette, a five-movement sextet created in 2017 at the Classique au Vert festival and then at La Seine musicale, before starting a tour including the Folle Journée de Nantes and the Flâneries Musicales de Reims. In July 2018, Félicien Brut played for the first time on the big stage of the Un Violon sur le sable festival his Caprice d’accordéoniste, for accordion and symphonic orchestra. In April 2019, he created Souvenirs de bal, a concerto for accordion and orchestra, with the Orchestre de Cannes conducted by Benjamin Levy. Other composition projects are underway, notably for the various duet formations of Félicien…

Previously, he worked as an arranger for many ensembles, theaters and operas, including the company Les Brigands (a dozen shows since Le Docteur Ox in 2003 and Ta Bouche in 2004 until P’tites Michu in 2018), the Théâtre du Châtelet (Le Chanteur de Mexico in 2006), the Opéra de Paris, the Opéra de Lyon, the Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse and the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées (Le Barbier de Séville in 2017-2018). His orchestrations have been played or recorded by the largest French orchestras (Orchestre National de France, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, Orchestre National d’Île-de-France, Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Orchestre Régional de Normandie, Orchestre Régional Avignon Provence, Orchestre de la Garde Républicaine, Les Siècles, Orchestre de Chambre Pelléas…) and international (Philharmonia Orchestra), alongside prestigious soloists (Anne Gastinel, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Vittorio Grigolo, Sonya Yoncheva, Nathalie Dessay, Gaëlle Arquez…).

Thibault Perrine teaches writing at the CRR in Paris and arrangement at the Pôle Supérieur Paris-Boulogne Billancourt.

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