Ami Flammer and the tempo of the world

Sound archive n°1

Things are there in the world, silent, still, but suddenly the wind rises and the branch cracks, the stone rolls and sings on the road, the scared cat meows and the faucet drips, plop-plop, the world has become soundas Francis Wolff says so beautifully in “Why Music?”.

The world becomes music and music enters our lives, taken up by musicians and their instruments, and it is constantly invented and reinvented, composers follow one another and their creations make us dance, move us, make us think and never leaves us indifferent even when we prefer to return to silence. What does a sonata tell us? A symphony? A quartet?

What do they tell us about the state of our world, of our humanity, of its progress or its excesses, of ethics and goodness, of the perversions and violence that men seem unable to stop?

What does music say about the revolutions, tremors and shocks of history? Is there a link between music and politics? And if so, how should we think about it? These are some essential questions that each page of a musical novel breathtaking and poignant entitled “ He remembered the story » where the big story meets the small story, that of the destiny of a violinist and his family which is constructed in a fragile way on the stage of the world theater of 20th century history.

The guest

FRIEND FLAMMER is a professor at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris.

He has been active in the field of musical creation for a long time. A soloist, he has played with numerous orchestras (Philharmonic de Radio France, Philharmonic de Moscow, Capitole de Toulouse…) and performs in chamber music, notably alongside Jean-Claude Pennetier.

Also very active in the field of contemporary music, he has created numerous works including the latest pieces for violin by John Cage, which are dedicated to him.

He has also composed music for numerous shows and films. For the cinema, we owe him the music of the latest films of Marguerite Duras and other important directors.

We also find him alongside Moshe Leiser with whom he recorded two albums of Yiddish Songs.
For Arte, he served as a musical guide and was the main performer in Nicolas Klotz’s film Songs of sand and stars on the diaspora of Jewish music.

Sound archive n°2

The guest book

At the age of twelve, Micha Kleidman, a young Jewish violinist, curious, worried and crazy about music, left his native Moldova to join the class of Leopold Auer, one of the greatest violin teachers in the world, at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. at the beginning of the 20th century.

Micha immerses himself with fervor in learning this instrument, a box of neurosis, while in the background Europe goes to war and in Russia, the Bolsheviks take power. Like the world, the tone explodes. Micha returns to his parents after ten years of absence.

But what does the future hold for his career as a violinist? Everywhere, anti-Semitism rumbles. After months of hesitation, Micha leaves for Palestine with his family. He found a faltering musical life there, but participated with Toscanini in the creation of the Palestine orchestra made up of eminent Jewish musicians who had fled Nazi Germany.

But the situation is deteriorating, both in Europe where a terrible tragedy is brewing, and in Palestine where the situation is getting worse. In He Remembered History, Ami Flammer offers us a poignant musical novel, where Micha’s destiny is constructed precariously on the unstable theater of History.

Sound archive n°3

First Sonata in G minor, BWV 1001: I. Adagio

Guest disk

Upcoming show

CHARLOTTE SALOMON LIFE OR THEATER?

May 27, 2024 at the workshop theater

Astrid Bas gives voice to Charlotte Salomon, a young artist born in 1916 and murdered at Auschwitz in 1943, through the discovery of a previously unpublished letter, addressed to her lover Daberlohn during his exile in Villefranche sur Mer where Charlotte who fled the Nazism creates “Life? or Theater? », the pictorial work of his entire life.

From her words, from her painting, which alone can save her from the torments of war and those of her family, we perceive a person taking shape: a woman, a teenager, moments of life, a part of herself – even maybe…

On stage, the text is the spine around which the video, music and movement revolve.

“ Next to the actress, the dancer Anna Chirescu and the musicians Ami Flammer and Paul Serri exude a ghostly presence. A sensitive relationship between text and dance. A dialogue of meaning, the founding approach of the work of Charlotte Salomon, “the union of the arts is necessary for the healing of a damaged life. » Emma of Montmartre