Tōru Takemitsu was a self-taught Japanese composer whose style was greatly influenced by some of the most emblematic French composers from the last 150 years, like Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Olivier Messiaen. This programme includes two exquisite chamber pieces by Ravel, Trio in A minor, and the Violin and Cello Sonata, a good example of the evocative musical language so quintessentially French –portrayed in the harmonics, rhythms and textures– which Takemitsu picks up and makes his own in Quatrain II, a piece in turn inspired in Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, sharing its instrumentation.

Víctor Durà-Vilà, 2017