The Night's Door
First performed on 17 March 2011 by the Reims Conservatory Orchestra,
with Ryoko Kondo as marimba soloist and Céline Léveillé conducting.
Instrumentation :
Bass Marimba and String orchestra
Ideal minimum ensemble: 10/10/8/6/4
pub. Alfonce Production - dur. ca 50 minutes
In my mind, The Night’s Door is a concertante piece, but not a concerto. Above all, it is a narrative work, in which the marimba echoes the inner voice of the central character.
I imagined a piece with a dark and melancholic character, dealing with the despair and absolute sadness experienced by a character who considers ending his life.
The piece therefore begins in an obscure atmosphere, gradually becoming more dreamlike as imagination and reality begin to merge. The first marimba cadenza represents the character’s decision to end his life. But the consumption of substances and alcohol gradually alters his perception of reality: sadness turns into nostalgia, time begins to fade, and the character slowly realizes that what he truly desires may not be to end his life, but to escape reality and live in another world. He then reaches what I have called “The Night’s Door.”
This leads to a moment of trance, dance, and euphoria. The boundaries between reality and imagination disappear, and it feels as though nothing else exists anymore: no worries, no sadness, no pain.
The piece ends with the character remaining in this state. I wanted the interruption of the music to bring the listener back to reality in a sudden and unexpected way. As if, at that moment, we too become aware that we have temporarily escaped reality, carried by the music into this other world alongside the character.
Music thus becomes a capsule of escape, a space outside of time in which we can momentarily free ourselves from reality.
The end of the work therefore marks not only the end of the story, but also the listener’s abrupt awakening, suddenly returning to the world that, for the duration of the music, they had forgotten.