"Mendonça monte sa baraque"
Eric Dahan | Libération, 13.06.13
Après George Benjamin l’an dernier, avec Written on Skin, le festival d’Aix a fait appel à l’un de ses élèves, le Portugais Vasco Mendonça, pour créer un ouvrage lyrique qui sera présenté en création mondiale. Le compositeur a choisi d’adapter, avec sa librettiste Sam Holcroft, une nouvelle de Julio Cortázar écrite en 1946 et intitulée Casa Tomada, qui raconte l’envahissement mystérieux d’une maison où vivent reclus, depuis des années, un frère et une sœur. La menace est-elle vraiment extérieure ? N’est-ce pas plutôt leur enfermement progressif dans des habitudes confinant au rituel qui a aliéné les habitants de cette maison ?«Bien sûr, répond Mendonça. Si la lecture politique de cette nouvelle, écrite sous la dictature, est légitime, sa portée n’en est pas moins universelle. Je l’ai découverte il y a des années, et j’ai été très impressionné. Au départ, on est dans un thriller : qui sont ces gens ? Pourquoi réagissent-ils ainsi ? On comprend progressivement que les habitants n’ont pas peur mais redoutent objectivement les conséquences de cette invasion sur leur vie quotidienne. Le mystère donc n’est plus du côté des envahisseurs, dont on ne saura jamais qui ils sont véritablement, mais du côté de ce frère et de cette sœur qui veulent à tout prix continuer à vivre selon une routine bien établie. Ce qui leur arrive est peut-être un rêve, la matérialisation magique d’une panique d’être dépossédé de soi. Encore une fois, Cortázar n’apporte aucune réponse, et j’aime cette liberté d’interprétation, car elle est très stimulante pour un compositeur.»
Be-bop. Né le 7 mars 1977 à Porto, Mendonça n’était pas prédestiné à devenir compositeur. Certes, son père médecin et sa mère professeure étaient mélomanes, et écoutaient musique baroque, classique, opéra et jazz à la maison. Mais ce n’est qu’à 14 ans que l’adolescent a eu le déclic : «Le be-bop, le cool jazz, je comprenais. Puis j’ai découvert A Love Supreme de John Coltrane, et les disques, de plus en plus free, de la fin de sa vie. Et, là, j’ai vraiment été interpellé.» Il commence donc à apprendre la guitare jazz et décide d’aller au conservatoire municipal, conscient du fait que des bases classiques sont indispensables, quelle que soit la musique que l’on veut jouer ou composer. S’il admire, comme tout le monde, le maître Wes Montgomery, Mendonça se passionne pour deux guitaristes. Le premier, John Scofield, est entré dans l’histoire avec les solos cubistes émaillant le fantastique Decoy de Miles Davis et la tournée qui suivit en 1984. Le deuxième, c’est Bill Frisell, le roi du sustain, dont les volutes atmosphériques font tout le prix du Paul Motian Trio avec le saxophoniste Joe Lovano. Sous leur influence, Mendonça compose dès l’âge de 15 ans des thèmes pour son propre groupe. Deux ans plus tard, il a une nouvelle révélation, celle de la Symphonie d’instruments à vents de Stravinsky et de la musique d’Olivier Messiaen. C’est décidé, il sera compositeur.
Après deux années passées à suivre des cours d’analyse et de composition, il part se perfectionner et rédiger sa maîtrise à Amsterdam, avant de revenir étudier deux ans de plus à Lisbonne. A la fin des années 90, il présente sa musique à George Benjamin et lui demande s’il l’accepterait comme élève pour son année de thèse, ce que le compositeur, qui fut le dernier élève d’Olivier Messiaen, accepte. «Je suis un grand admirateur de la musique de George Benjamin, car elle est au confluent de plusieurs courants actuels mais n’en demeure pas moins originale et personnelle. J’admire son grand métier, sa façon de trouver de nouvelles combinaisons musicales et sonores et de les couler dans une forme théâtrale, riche, élégante, séduisante.»
Liturgie.Le festival permettra aussi d’entendre d’autres pièces de Mendonça comme Drive, un trio pour violon, violoncelle et piano créé en 2003 dont les constants flux de notes et les superpositions de rythmes, mètres, accents et valeurs, trahissent l’influence des Clocks ligetiens et de Harrison Birtwistle. On donnera également son quatuor à cordes, intitulé Caged Symphonies, composé en 2008. La pièce alterne mouvements constants, dialogues entre instrument solo et multiples, sur le modèle des répons dans la liturgie d’église, et enfin, des mécanismes complexes combinant cycles et périodes de structures diverses. Sur le site du compositeur, on peut avoir un aperçu de son écriture avec un fragment de Ping, adaptation lyrique d’une pièce de Beckett.«L’écriture vocale de The House Taken Over sera assez différente de celle de Ping, au sens où il ne s’agit pas d’un texte abstrait mais narratif. J’ai donc essayé de trouver un équilibre entre une écriture très classique, voire belcantiste, qui serve la progression dramatique, et des interventions un peu plus audacieuses, notamment des sauts de registre typiques de l’écriture contemporaine, quand le drame et la psychologie des personnages l’exigent.»
On demande à cet ancien stagiaire de l’Académie européenne de musique, fondée par Stéphane Lissner pour le festival, ce qu’il compte enseigner aux élèves de la master class qu’il animera cette année : «Je ne veux pas influencer leur écriture mais j’aime l’idée de dialoguer et d’exprimer quelque chose avec la musique. Personnellement, la solitude du compositeur me pèse, c’est peut-être pourquoi j’aime de plus en plus partir d’un texte et travailler pour le théâtre. Pour le reste, si je comprends la nécessité esthétique et politique du sérialisme intégral, et l’esthétique du refus des compositeurs de l’avant-garde des années 60, je crois que notre époque est à l’expression et à la communication. Exprimer des choses sensibles et raffinées reste un défi excitant à relever pour tout compositeur d’aujourd’hui.»
"Festivals de l'été 2013: les jeunes talents à découvrir"
Thierry Hillériteau | Le Figaro, 13.06.13
(...) Vasco Mendonça, compositeur - collaborateur régulier des meilleurs ensembles, et notamment de Remix (en résidence à la Casa del Musica de Porto), le compositeur portugais Vasco Mendonça est, à 36 ans, la valeur montante de la musique classique contemporaine. Après avoir participé en 2010 à l'Académie européenne de musique d'Aix-en-Provence, cet élève de George Benjamin reçoit les honneurs de son festival d'art lyrique, qui donnera la première mondiale de son opéra de chambre The House Taken Over, d'après Cortazar.(...)
PING
Steph Power | Wales Art Review, 05.04.13
(...) First on the programme tonight came a piece demonstrating MTW’s continued remit to explore new work; the UK premiere of Ping (2011) by the Portuguese composer Vasco Mendonça, (...) a serious and highly capable composer of great promise. The two works (Eight Songs for a Mad King and Ping) made an excellent pair and a fascinating bridge across the generations, showing complementary yet diverse approaches to the worlds of music theatre, language and performance. (...)
The piece was beautifully staged and exceptionally well executed, making the most of an ideal theatrical and acoustical space. In this production, director Michael McCarthy chose to split the solo part between two performers to great effect, with a singer (Helen-Jane Howells in clear, pure voice) ‘ghosting’ the actor/narrator (an equally impressive Nia Roberts) from behind a semi-opaque gauze curtain onto which was projected Aguilar’s flickering black and white patterns. This latter worked with the diffused electronic sounds to create a feeling of internal white noise or static entirely pertinent to the flux of Beckett’s short, repeated phrases and fractured syntax. Also visible behind the gauze were the ensemble of two clarinets, violin, ‘cello and percussion (conducted by Michael Rafferty) from whom emanated music of exquisite lightness and textural plasticity which sought not to ‘interpret’ or ‘enhance’ the Beckett, but rather paralleled its emotional resonances in the most subtle way – in co-witness with the audience, as it were, to the protagonist’s increasingly frustrated recycling of episodic memories.
PING
Hillary Finch | The Times, 29.03.13
(...) the first half of the evening offers a new angle on human distress in the UK premiere of Ping by the young Portuguese composer, Vasco Mendonça. This is a musical response to Samuel Beckett’s dramatic monologue: a white-on-white cameo of consciousness, its language bleached into both panic and stasis by rhythm and repetition.
Beckett seems to be everywhere at the moment: both Cheltenham and Edinburgh will feature his work this summer. And composers are increasingly drawn to counterpoint his verbal music with their own. Mendonça does it with a small ensemble, dominated by the shudders of viola and cello, and the melancholy of bass clarinet and marimba. Michael McCarthy’s production has actor Nia Roberts separated by a gauze from her alter ego, the soprano Helen-Jane Howells. They share Beckett’s text like the shifting light of an unstable psyche: both give superb performances, complemented by an electronic score and a stuttering monochrome video projection by Sandro Aguilar. Just two more shows: be sure to be there.
"Multimedia opera by Vasco Mendonça and Sandro Aguilar premieres in the UK"
Lusa | iOnline, 20.03.13
PING, a multimedia piece - the result of a collaboration between composer Vasco Mendonça and director Sandro Aguilar - will have its international premiere on 26 March in Wales.
Produced by Music Theatre Wales and staged by Michael McCarthy, PING will have its premiere at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff, followed by two more performances: on April 17 at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre and on April 18 at Clwyd Theatre Cymru in Mold.
This piece is a setting off a text by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, and was premiered in 2011 at the Teatro São Luis in Lisbon, within Temps d'Images Festival.
The opportunity to perform it abroad originated from a meeting in France with the british director, where they found " compatible visions of theater and a shared admiration for Beckett", said Vasco Mendonça to Lusa.
In the new production of this rather hermetic text - that talks about spatial constraint and claustrophobia - McCarthy has chosen to to separate the spoken and the sung parts, by using an actress and a soprano.
"There is a kind of transposition of the various levels of consciousness that are present throughout the text, thus being made visible throughout the show," the composer has said.
Unlike what happened two years ago - when director Sandro Aguilar was operating the video in real-time - this production will display previously recorded sequences.
Still, it will use the same "abstract images, sometimes with an organic component, almost eschatological."
Vasco Mendonça and Aguilar have collaborated before, in a piece also based on a text by Samuel Beckett - a sign of interest in multidisciplinary productions.
However, working with video "is difficult and risky" because it can become a distraction.
"It is difficult for the energy on stage not to be dissipated, because video is a media that sucks our attention in a rather brutal way," he admits. (...)
"Il BING multimediale di Mendonça"
Frederico Platania | www.samuelbeckett.it, 08.03.13
''Martedì 26 marzo, al Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (Cardiff), si terrà la prima di Ping, la nuova opera multimediale di Vasco Mendonça. Le videoscenografie sono state realizzate da Sandro Aguilar e, nella produzione del Music Theatre Wales, in scena ci saranno l’attrice Nia Roberts e il soprano Helen-Jane Howells.
L’opera di Mendonça si basa sulla prosa breve Bing. Il compositore portoghese ha rispettato l’originale beckettiano, sfruttando però le ripetizioni e il ritmo già presenti nel testo di Beckett per costruire qualcosa di nuovo e personale.''
"40 talents you´ll be hearing from"
Luciana Leiderfarb | Expresso, 03.01.13
"Having studied in Amsterdam with Klaas de Vries and in London with George Benjamin, Vasco Mendonça won in 2004 the Lopes-Graça Composition Award. Several commissions in Portugal (Casa da Música, Teatro S Luiz and Culturgest) and abroad (Aix-en-Provence, Aldeburgh, etc) make him one of the promising names within his field. In October, his piece GROUP TOGETHER, AVOID SPEECH was premiered at Gulbenkian Orchestra 50th anniversary concert. Projects in 2013 include the premiere of an opera at Aix-en-Provence Festival."
GROUP TOGETHER, AVOID SPEECH
Jorge Calado | Expresso, 10.11.12
(...) All the stars deserved by the concert are due to the world premiere of Vasco Mendonça's GROUP TOGETHER, AVOID SPEECH, based upon a T.S.Eliot verse. (...) Mendonça has composed a work of great breadth, expressive and virtuosistic, crossed by urges of unrestfulness. At times luscious and lyrical, at times lively and nervous, it was a gratifying surprise.
GROUP TOGETHER, AVOID SPEECH
Álvaro Garcia de Zúñiga | New Music Review Lounge, 22.10.12
"Commissioned by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation for the 50th anniversary of the Gulbenkian Orchestra, the new orchestral work by Vasco Mendonça (Porto 1977), GROUP TOGETHER, AVOID SPEECH was premiered on October 17th, 2012. This is a fine symphonic piece, and one of rare intensity. What comes as a surprise is the use of original timbric combinations, which are of great efficiency (like, for example, the marvellous percussion passage in the work’s second part, or in the third one the trialogue between the double basses section and the double bass and violoncello solos); if the term “efficiency” can be applied to what concerns the listener’s perception, in relation to such a sensible and intelligent orchestral writing as in the case of Vasco Mendonça, an unquestionably enthusing and greatly talented composer.
The work’s beginning is united by a preliminary pulse, from which the concertante apparatus is being developed (a string quintet and woodwind quartet, on more than one occasion summed with the percussion and brass). And what is being established throughout its three parts is a great musical moment, and it would be quite difficult, and above all unnecessary, to try translating it into words.
Just before the first sound is emitted, the composer tells us in the printed programme that “a party is a party” and that on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the orchestra, “this [concert] constitutes a special party”. He also confesses that beyond the festive occasion he tried to recompense both to the orchestra and the foundation the fact that, “without being aware [they played] an indispensable role in [his] formation as musician”.
Retribution achieved, the result is a work that deserves being part of the repertoire of any great orchestra. Thus we hope that the Gulbenkian Orchestra holds the same conviction and will let us hear Vasco Mendonça’s work again very soon. To reprogramme it would be not only an acknowledgement of the value and quality of GROUP TOGETHER, AVOID SPEECH, but also a way of supporting this work and its circulation, so that it may be performed by other orchestras here or elsewhere."
"Happy Birthday, Gulbenkian Orchestra!"
Cristina Fernandes | Público, 20.10.12
(...) In Vasco Mendonça's new work, lastingly applauded by the audience, the orchestra also displayed an expressive commitment and technical ability by presenting a beautiful tone, a good dynamic balance and tension management, be it in the tuttis or in the multiple concertante games the composer played with a broad number of soloists (string quintet, woodwind quartet and timpani/percussion(...). The piece, called GROUP TOGETHER, AVOID SPEECH (inspired in a passage of T.S. Eliot's Hollow Men), displays a solid writing that takes advantadge of the orchestral colours and of the multiple instrumental dialogues when building its textures. The development of constant rhythmic and melodic cycles in the first and third movements gives the discourse a mobility that captures every moment of the listener's attention, contrasting with the lyric and very seductive landscapes of the central movement (...)
JERUSALEM
Bernardo Mariano | Diário de Notícias, 10.07.09
(...) The music of Vasco Mendonça: sensitive, refined, strangely seductive, reactive and reproductive.(...) Within these coordinates, Alexandra Moura and João Rodrigues have convincingly overcome the demands of their parts. Cesário Costa and the Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra have delivered an excellent performance. (...) A work of memories open to the future.
JERUSALEM
Cristina Fernandes | Público, 05.07.09
(...) With its 'world ache', this opera displays a rather interesting harmonic and timbral work - intense music, at times desperate. The chamber ensemble of the Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra was very well conducted by Cesário Costa. And above the orchestral sounds human voices emerged. A well-balanced cast of six rigorous and secure voices was decisive to give thickness to this opera of ideas (...)
A performance of surprising unit, considering it's made up of fragments, leaps in time, unfinished monologues and microdialogues. But the simple and effective work of Luis Miguel Cintra and the beautiful music of Vasco Mendonça gave it its coherence.(...)