The Orchester Métropolitain is putting on its program this week a very strange concerto, written for an instrument that has long seemed obsolete: the theremin. Simon Bertrand has composed a work for the centenary of the invention, in 1920, of this ancestor of electronic musical instruments.
Five moments in the hectic life of Léon Théremine is the title of this theremin concerto which will retrace the life of Lev Sergueïevich Termen, better known by the name of the instrument he invented.
If the sound of a theremin recalls that of the ondes Martenot, the composer Simon Bertrand perfectly sums up their essential difference. “In the ondes Martenot, we have a keyboard, that is to say visual cues, whereas in the theremin, we have no visual cues, except the movement of the hand in a vacuum. Each small movement of the hand causes the notes to oscillate and change. »
It is the movement in front of the electrical signal that affects the frequency, one hand driving the pitch, the other the volume. “It’s a terribly difficult instrument to play, even for a musician who has perfect pitch. I myself have a lot of difficulty playing Brother Jacques on it. You have to have an extremely precise ear and control every movement,” says Simon Bertrand.
Cinema use
Simon Bertrand composed this tribute to the life of Léon Thérémine for his friend, the thereminist Thorwald Jørgensen. Indeed, this instrument is singularly lacking in “noble” works. “It was very popular in the 1950s or 1960s, because it was used a lot in cinema in B movies, science fiction films, played in a certain way with a little scary sound for horror effects . He then returned to Mars Attacks! by Tim Burton. »
Simon Bertrand points out that Thorwald Jørgensen “doesn’t play the theremin at all like in the 1950s, with a big vibrato and horror movie sounds”.
The composer remembers only one existing concerto: that of the Cypriot composer Anis Fuleihan, played by the star of the theremin in the United States, Clara Rockmore (1911-1998). There is a document with the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Leopold Stokowski.
For our part, we had felt the potential for a return to grace of the instrument during the International Festival of Films on Art 2021, which screened in Montreal a documentary on the composer Régis Campo. The duty then recommended “not to miss the work Dancefloor with Pulsingthe excellent idea of a spectacular scherzo for theremin and orchestra”.
Biography and censorship
Five moments in the hectic life of Léon Théremine is “built more like a symphony than a concerto: there is an overture, an allegro, a slow movement (dedicated to the memory of Lise Beauchamp), a scherzo and a finale”, explains the composer. Eloquent subtitles accompany the story.
“Reading about the incredible life of this incredible man, the idea of a musical biography by choosing five important moments of his life imposed itself. Simon Bertrand points out that this decision had been taken “long before the pandemic and the war in Ukraine”. If he specifies it, it is because both have complicated things.
To distribute the concerto, since there is a lack of repertoire, there was talk of a concert in Lviv, Ukraine. This project has been cancelled. “They found that there were too many Russian references in the concerto”, laments Simon Bertrand. “Now, what is it? I tell in my concerto the life of a human being who turns out to be of Russian origin, but he is a man of the world who fled the USSR, came to the United States, married an Afro- American in a segregationist America, then was imprisoned in the gulag on his return to the USSR. Furthermore, I make a two-bar quotation from the Russian anthem to express his heartbreak between two countries, because it is said that he was kidnapped and brought back by force to the USSR. »
Simon Bertrand is very upset by this rebuff. “Look at José Evangelista, a Spanish composer of Catalan origin who lived in Quebec and composed music inspired by Bali! If, on the other hand, we are heading towards a world where everyone isolates themselves and only makes an art linked to their own culture and their membership of a group or a community in the name of political correctness, we manages to renounce a notion of art as a universal language that aspires to quite the opposite, that is to say to bring together different sensitivities, communities and cultures. I make music to meet the other, to meet other ways of thinking, other ways of expression. »