Flash-Back, for large orchestra (l997-98)

At the center of the Flash-Back, a work commissioned by the Orchestre de Paris, premiered in 1998, we find once again the problematic of the opposition of a forme resting on layers of processes (often leading the olyphony from a voluble abundance to a more austere writing) and the presence of repeated elements, although this time not only un the form of "musical situations" reiterated inside the work, but also as a "montage" in the work of citations of previous works: Mémoire vive (1998), … à mesure (1997), and Memento pour Marc (1993). The impact of an aesthetic open to those contradictions likely to enrich it is proven anew by the fact that just when the mise en abyme of excerpts from Hurel's corpus and the "narrative" highlighting os "discreet objects" in the work bear withness to a crisis in the priciples of spectral classicism (founded exclusively on a work of "differences"), the title of the piece objectively emphasizes the operations established, implying that these procedures are the very content of musical expression and not, as in the (neo-) traditional repertoire, simple meditations. The way we listen to Flash-Back then, is guided by "musical situations" meant to be repeated; they are stated in the firs part of the work (which has four) in a way sufficiently evident for their sound "image" to be committed to memory. so for example, chords grow larger, launched in an energetic lifting which introduce the work and return just before the impressive conquest, in the conclusion, of the extremes of the auditory space. Listening to this piece, that manages to paint in glowing colors the swing of spirited fanfares and moaning trumpets (first and last parts), with the groove of a funk bass (at the work's dynamic "climax", about two-thirds of the way through) in a form which offers the listener a way to join in (perceptible processes, repetitions), we could legitimately presume that its title has prophetic value: Flash-Back could belong among those works music lovers and musicians take pleasure in remembering.

Éric Denut, translated by Nikki Halpern