Jean-Louis Robert died twenty years ago in a car accident. Had it not been for this tragic event, he would probably have become one of the most widely played of Belgian composers (he composed some forty works between 1970 and 1979). A pupil of Henri Pousseur, he was part of a movement that reintroduced harmonic colour into music without renouncing the acquisitions of serialism. This young composer, a lover of and influenced by the music of Reich, Messiaen, Cage, Varèse - but also by Sibelius and Mahler - wanted to establish a new relationship between the composer, the performers and the public (independence of the orchestra that plays part of Aquatilis without a conductor, choice of tempi left to the discretion of the performers in Lithoïde VIII, extensive improvisation in Domino). He was also a formidable teacher (notably of young people), and an imaginative organiser, and this CD pays tribute to a composer whose death leaves a gaping void in Belgian musical creation.
