Benoît Mernier: Ustica – Jean-Paul Dessy

“This album, Ustica, marks a further stage in the firmly established relationship between Benoît Mernier and the record label Cypres, which over the course of 25 years has traced the evolution of the composer’s musical language and the affirmation of his artistic identity. It will be released to coincide with the premiere of his new opera, Bartelby, at the Opéra Royal de Wallonie.

Ustica marks a milestone in this collaboration, painting a portrait of a composer and offering testimony to a long-standing artistic partnership. Ustica reveals a moment of maturity in which formal rigour, poetry and memory intertwine. The two symphonic movements contrast a contemplative adagio shaped by Baudelaire (Comme d’autres esprits) with a bright, virtuosic scherzo (Sur un ciel immense), a joyful tribute to Philippe Boesmans. Offering, for alto voice and ensemble, sets three spiritual poems by Rabindranath Tagore to music in a continuous flow moving from longing and hope to joy. Deux poèmes pour violon et piano, dedicated to Jacques De Decker, explore memory through a playful and light-hearted style of composition consisting of fragments and snippets. Finally, Ustica, inspired by a poem by Octavio Paz, unfolds an orchestral meditation on life, death and memory that oscillates between sun-drenched stillness and the mysterious fluidity of incantatory melodies.”