Program note

“L’empreinte des saisons” [The Imprint of the Seasons] was composed based on Benjamin Goron’s eponymous poem. Like the poem itself, the music takes a photographic approach to evoke the cyclical passage of the seasons. A gesture here, a colour, some energy there. The four movements flow without interruption, borrowing their vocabulary from impressionist music as well as contemporary music and jazz.

Arbuste
Pour donner des racines aux fruits de nos erreurs
Tu les enveloppes doucement
Dans de vaines promesses que tu nommes bourgeon […]

Each instrument becomes a link to spring renewal. Effervescence is a mask behind which competition takes hold. The stubbornness of wanting to be reborn. A blossom blooming, roots growing, wings beating for the first time.

Pas une goutte de vent
Seul le soupçon de tes lèvres
Qui me chante les louanges du printemps disparu […]

A backdrop full of glissandi, behind which is anticipation, languor. Between the left-hand melody and interspersed right-hand notes, the contemplative piano seems to rediscover the beauty of the starry sky.

Marécage
La sève qui te tire de tes insomnies
Et remplit de poison ton écrin de mélasse
A volé la jeunesse des arbres […]

The red-orange specter of autumn invites the colours and rhythms of jazz to weave their way into this movement where the piano blues groove sets up a clarinet solo tinged with inflexions of Ornette Coleman.

En grattant sous la neige
J’ai trouvé le fossile d’un lac
Qui m’a révélé ton nom […]

Gentleness and melancholy show through in this winter synonymous with slumber. But upon closer inspection, there appears a chickadee, a red leaf still on the branch. A melodic motif glides from instrument to instrument, revealing an icy landscape, then the breath of someone dear, loved or lost, perhaps invented, drifting through the poem like a sleepy ghost.

- Karine Bétournay