THE HOUSE TAKEN OVER

Gilles Macassar | Télérama, 10.07.13

(...) It remains the inventive music of Vasco Mendonça, a disciple of George Benjamin with a very steady craft. Assigned to an ensemble of thirteen musicians (...), it brings to this stifling huis-clos its share of evasion and onirism. An abundant and very colourful percussion (bells, guiro, wood block, vibraphone, triangle, roto toms) evokes, through repetitive cells, the bustling and manic housekeeping of the two characters. The strident harmonies of the brass (two trumpets and trombone), translate, at regular intervals, the rise of anxiety and confusion in the Brother (baritone Oliver Dunn) and Sister´s (mezzo Kitty Whately) souls. By its subject and its atmospheres, THE HOUSE TAKEN OVER evokes "The fall of the House of Uscher", Debussy´s unfinished opera, or Béla Bartók´s "Bluebeard´s Castle". A prestigious lineage in which you want Vasco Mendonça to fully enroll soon in his own right.