#musIICa

Just like the impressionist painters Monet, Manet and Degas opposed conventions armed with vibrant colours and short, quick brushstrokes, so did Claude Debussy break the musical mould of his time. His dreamy and sensual compositions with short melodic motives and unique instrumental timbres make for a music with no hard edges. It feels unrooted in time.
Brussels Muzique’s concert features Debussy’s Sonata for flute, viola, and harp. A very uncommon setting for those times. It gained, however, immediate popularity thanks to its colorful bright sound. Such instrument combination inspired many other composers of the 20th century, such as Arnold Bax with his Elegiac Trio. Strikingly, both compositions were created in the wake of dramatic events (WWI for Debussy’s Sonata and the Eastern rising in Ireland for Bax’s Elegiac Trio), which becomes evident in the melancholy and veiled sadness that runs through these works.
To continue, Matteo Delmonte (solo flute at the Brussels Opera House ‘La Monnaie/De Munt’), Monika Mlynarczyk (co-principal viola at the Brussels Opera House ‘La Monnaie/De Munt’) and Emma Wauters (harp
professor at Leuven LUCA school of arts) will also bring to the stage a Sonata from Nino Rota, Italian composer world-famous for his film scores (Fellini, Visconti and Coppola), and a transcript of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet by Gilad Cohen.