Portrait de Rita

For this plucked string trio I imagined a dialogue between the guitar, an instrument that is familiar to me but that I have paradoxically used little in my previous pieces, and the mandolin, whose Mediterranean sound evokes a poetry from elsewhere, from another time.
Like a conversation between three people who have just met and are beginning to talk shyly, I have conceived a series of soft, hybrid sounds that travel from one instrument to the other, in a mixture of percussion (during the attack), colour (natural harmonics) and resonance.
During the whole of the first part, the dialogue settles into a peaceful atmosphere where time seems to be in slow motion; the three instruments take the floor, one after the other. The mechanics of the musical phrase will gradually fall into place, allowing me
to develop linearity in time. In the central part of the piece, the three instruments play in unison and come together in the same discourse.
The mandolin then asserts itself in a solo role and is accompanied by the broken harmonies of the guitars.