Laurent Mettraux
Laurent Mettraux of Courtaman, Switzerland, in the Swiss plateau hills, has had his many choral and orchestral compositions critically and popularly acclaimed in Europe, including by the bellwether Donaueschingen Festival for new music, which awarded its first prize to his Ombre (“Shadow”) orchestral score.
Born in Fribourg, Switzerland, in 1970, he studied at Conservatoire et Académie de Musique de Fribourg (including with the distinguished composer René Oberson) and at Conservatoire Supérieur de Musique de Genève (composition with Eric Gaudibert and conducting with Liang-Sheng Chen). Among his awards, in addition to the Donaueschingen Festival honor, are a fellowship from Switzerland’s Kiefer-Hablitzel Foundation and first prize and the Public Prize in Lausanne Chamber Orchestra’s competition for young composers. His works are performed around the world by groups and individuals, including the Talich Quartet, Tibor Varga, Jesús López-Cobos, Sylvain Cambreling, Francisco Araiza, Wiener Klangforum, Zurcher Streichtrio and the New London Chamber Choir. His concerto for organ and orchestra, which he composed for the inauguration of the new great organ of Lausanne Cathedral, will be performed again in 2008 by the legendary Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, whose predecessors reach back to the time of J.S. Bach.
FROM THE COMPOSER
"Plus près de toi que tu ne l’es toimême"
("Closer to You Than You Are to It Yourself")
Mr. Mettraux’s work, written for eight solo voices and an eight-part choir, alternates tensions and relaxations by juxtaposing various spiritual traditions and human emotions. Among the traditions are ancient yotser (after Isaiah 45:7) and ahava Jewish blessings, German Christian mystical rhyming couplets from Angelus Silesius’ Cherubinischer Wandersmann (1674), Psalm 145, the Book of John, the Great Hymn to the Aten from the famous 18th dynasty of ancient Egypt, two poems by the 17th century Marathi poet saint of India Shri Tukaram, the Mahayana Infinite Life Sutra of Pure Land Buddhism and a mystical poem by the Islamic scholar Ibn Arabi, one of the most important spiritual teachers within Sufism and a prime exponent of wahdat al-wujud, or the “unity of being.” The composition’s first part is a “Song of Praise,” beginning in a solemn manner and continuing with a more intimate passage, sung by the group of soloists. The second part begins with two great crescendos, after which arise ecstatic seventh chords (chords consisting of a triad plus a destabilizing note forming an interval of a seventh above the chord’s root), resolving the one on the other, before returning to the climax. The work ends on a long pentatonic chord.
