The two works on this recording, La porte (The Door) and Plume, belong to a genre that can be called monodrama: one solo vioce tells a story set to music. In both pieces, the vocal style emphasizes the different levels of the text, that is, the general narration and the characters. The musical accompaniment further evokes the characters and the situations.
In La porte – soprano and percussion – Alexis Nouss derives his inspiration from Franz Kafka’s work Before the Law using it as a framework to recount diverse traditional folk tales.
Plume – soprano and cello – is composed in three movements based on three excerpts from Un certain Plume (a text closely related to oral tradition) by Henri Michaux. The movements are conceived in short scenes depicting Plume, a character who undergoes Kafkaesque adventures.
1-7. La Porte
8-10. Plume
