charles david wajnberg
les éphémères V : éclats (2020)
les éphémères VI : nuées (2020)
Les éphémères is a series of short pieces exploring a form of listening that is both attentive and fleeting, practiced in the contemplation of fleeting phenomena. Where there’s no drama at play, the ear doesn’t need to anticipate long tension, but finds a certain fragility in the instrumental sound, on the edge of the music.
Éclats repeats the same gesture of appearance and erasure, whose deformations compose an abstract geometric landscape. The bursts of voice that emerge from the soundtrack are fragments of Otto Frisch and his aunt Lise Meitner’s account of their discovery of the fission of the atomic nucleus between 1932 and 1938.
The disquieting world of the atom gives way in Nuées to that of a more familiar nature: the flight of birds. The very concrete sounds of flapping wings, lapping, breathing or whirring, barely above the silence, seek out the shapes of the wind and the flying cloud passing by, in details and overall movements.