PROGRAMME NOTES

written by JANNIS VAN DE SANDE

François-Bernard Mâche Synergies (1963) (for ensemble and tape)
Angélica Castelló Star Washers (2020-21) (for orchestra and electronics)
Angélica Castelló live electronics set (solo performance)
Priscilla McLean A Magic Dwells (1986)
William Dougherty the dreams of imagined homelands (2023) (for orchestra, wax cylinder phonograph player and electronics

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06.11.2025 FLAGEY BRUSSELS
07.11.2025 DE BIJLOKE GENT

In 1878 Thomas Edison patented the phonograph. The device, which engraved sound vibrations onto a surface by means of a stylus, offered for the first time the possibility of recording sound and playing it back. Numerous accounts describe the astonishment of those attending the public demonstrations of this invention. The encounter with disembodied voices, sounds torn from their source, was for many either bewildering or downright frightening. The talking machine epitomised the uncanny: the experience of something both strange and familiar at once. Some listeners suspected a trick, even ventriloquism, while newspapers proclaimed a ‘wonder machine’.

It is hardly surprising that the disruptive potential of recorded sound also caught the imagination of composers. Above all, the encounter between reproduced sound and live orchestration lent itself to many musical curiosities. It is precisely this convergence that forms the thread running through this programme. Under the direction of Ilan Volkov, the Brussels Philharmonic ventures into a singular repertoire that confronts the familiar, organic sound of the orchestra with elusive electronics—sometimes enriching one another, at other times provoking.

With François-Bernard Mâche, the programme revisits one of the pioneers of the meeting between tape and orchestra. A student of Olivier Messiaen, Mâche would later, alongside figures such as Pierre Schaeffer, play a pioneering role within 'musique concrète'. While this genre initially developed mainly in the studio, Mâche soon smuggled his tape recorder into the concert hall.

Synergies, composed in 1963, is a telling title and an exemplary case: written for a modest ensemble of 21 musicians and a tape part that enters into dialogue with them. This invisible interlocutor sometimes steps into the spotlight, only to dissolve again into the instrumental bustle. New timbres and rhythms collide with the orchestral palette, yet at times the relationship between tape and live sound is one of imitation and harmony. Synergies thus marks an early milestone: the tape does not serve merely as accompaniment but challenges the orchestra as we know it, intensifying and destabilising our listening experience. Mâche’s composition creates a space where the orchestra sounds both strange and familiar, rediscovered in a new, hybrid form.

Angélica Castelló ingeniously continues the dialogue with Star Washers (2020–21), a composition commissioned by Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. It was originally intended to mark the inauguration of the James Webb Space Telescope. The pandemic altered those plans, yet Castelló remained faithful to her cosmic theme.

Above all, she introduces the voice as though it were an element from unknown regions of the universe. In reality, the voice belongs to soprano Barbara Hannigan, whom we hear singing and breathing, in the studio and on a beach in Brittany. These vocal elements are diffused into the concert hall through discreetly concealed loudspeakers. If loudspeakers have gradually been accepted as surrogate sources of reproduced sound, Castelló’s intervention clearly seeks to revive the original uncanny experience inherent in sound technology. She too confronts this invisible presence with the very physicality of the orchestra. A play of presence and absence unfolds, in which familiar sounds suddenly acquire a mysterious aura. The orchestra then takes a collective breath, after which Castelló performs an improvised electronic set.

A Magic Dwells (1986), in the words of composer Priscilla McLean, is ‘a surrealistic sound-poem on the creation myth’. Written—inevitably—for orchestra and tape, the piece belongs to McLean’s often programmatic output and her deep fascination with nature (and its sounds) and myth. The tape part, however, consists largely of (more or less manipulated) orchestral sounds. Again, the boundary between what resounds live and what was recorded is often blurred. But rather than casting the two—as with Mâche and Castelló—as opponents, McLean meticulously weaves tape and orchestra into a dense, quasi-mystical, flowing whole. The recording lends the familiar instrumental palette an invisible force: we hear the orchestra unchained, transcending its earthly possibilities. Here, tape functions as a kind of extended technique—unsurprisingly, another of McLean’s great passions.

for orchestra, wax cylinder phonograph player and electronics

Closing the programme, William Dougherty’s the dreams of imagined homelands (2023) provides a full-circle moment. Written for large orchestra, electronics and Edison wax-cylinder phonograph, the work juxtaposes the archaic device—whose lo-fi timbre is putting it mildly—with contemporary electronics and orchestra. The composer sets up a dialogue between past and present, between the tangible and the elusive, between nostalgia and progress. The fact that Dougherty uses a wax-cylinder recording of Home, Sweet Home naturally heightens the nostalgic character of the piece. The obsolete technology and weathered recording remind us of the material and ultimately fragile nature of recorded memories—or, conversely, of the way media shape our remembrance.