LDV103

33 ORCHESTRE NATIONAL DE METZ GRAND EST ∙ DAVID REILAND Marina Chiche: How did A Little Summer Suite come into being? Betsy Jolas : It all started with a rather unexpected meeting with Sir Simon Rattle when I went over to England to hear an opera by a friend of mine, Julian Anderson. After the performance, we found ourselves together at a dinner, where we talked a lot (and ate very well too!). As soon as I got back to Paris, I was commissioned to write a work for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (of which he was principal conductor at the time). The request was quite urgent, and I had another piece to finish, but of course I accepted. I then asked myself how I could write a work that wouldn’t take up too much time. I had already been toying with the notion of ‘wandering’, itinerant music, in other words music that seems aimless and could therefore land anywhere, at any time. This idea is borrowed from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition , which I utterly adore. I totally agree with what Debussy* said about him. Actually, I’ve always loved Mussorgsky’s music, which I got to know at a very early age because we were one of the few families to own a gramophone, on which I used to listen to Boris Godunov with Chaliapin in the title role! * ‘Never has a more refined sensibility expressed itself through such simple means. It resembles the art of an inquisitive savage who discovers music at every step taken by his emotions. Nor is there ever any question of such a thing as “form”, or at least, that form is so manifold that it is impossible to relate it to established, one might say “official” forms: it is held together and composed by small successive touches, linked by a mysterious bond and by a gift of luminous clairvoyance.’