This recording brings together four works that belong both to the turn of the century (1999-2004) and to a moment in the career of Pierre Bartholomée that enabled him to devote himself more fully to composition as part of a residency hosted by the Catholic University of Leuven. The more tranquil tasks of teaching and cultural organisation thus followed upon those that had absorbed him for thirty years as the conductor first of the Ensemble Musique Nouvelle and then the Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège (1977-1999). The premiere in Leuven of an ‘Inter-faculty workshop for music composition’ thus accompanied the genesis of three of the present works: Fragments des Belles Heures, first performed in 2003, the 13 Bagatelles for piano and the String Quartet in 2004. Added to these is a long monodrama for voice and 19 instruments, Le Rêve de Diotime (1999), with a text taken from Henry Bauchau’s story, Diotime et les lions.
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