Christian Rivet
Work
Terre d’Ombres
for Solo Flute
- 00:58 'Terre d’ombres' for solo flute: Retrieving a lost song
- 02:57 Poetry as inspiration: T.S. Eliot
- 03:44 Cracks in the wall: Decoding 'Terre d’ombres'
- 05:03 A resonance of Boulez’s 'Mémoriale': Form and structure
- 06:18 Searching for new ways to write: Pierre Boulez
- 08:33 Emmanuel Pahud performing in the Pierre Boulez Saal
- 10:58 A bond of trust: on the relationship with Emmanuel Pahud
- 12:33 Re-transcribing an inner voice: composing during quarantine
Christian Rivet is a French composer, guitarist, and arts manager. He studied guitar at the conservatory of Metz and from 1984 at the Conservatoire National de Musique de Paris with Alexandre Lagoya. He received further guidance from guitarist Alvaro Perri and flutists Michel Debost and Aurèle Nicolet, while encounters with musicians such as Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Peter Eötvös, Pascal Dusapin, and lutenist Hopkinson Smith helped shape his artistic development. Christian Rivet performs as a soloist and with his longtime musical partners Emmanuel Pahud, Michel Portal, and the Quatuor Sine Nomine at venues including the Vienna Konzerthaus and London’s Wigmore Hall as well as on extensive tours of the U.S., Japan, and China. He has participated in the world premieres of numerous works by other composers, most recently including Philippe Hersant’s Paradiso for archlute and choir and Pascal Dusapin’s opera Macbeth Underworld. In 2017 he wrote his flute concerto Quelque part dans l’inachevé for Emmanuel Pahud; his ensemble piece Étoile double was premiered by the Ensemble intercontemporain and Matthias Pintscher the following year. Among his latest works are Entre l’outre-mer et le bleu roi for solo viola, the piano trio Courant d’étoiles, and the string quartet amahlathi amanzi, premiered by the Van Kuijk Quartet in 2019. He is currently working on a new cello concerto for Jean-Guihen Queyras and on an opera. Since 2007 Christian Rivet has been artistic director of the Le Vent sur l’Arbre festival in Burgundy.