Lemoine Dufourt - Le Mani Del Violinista D'après Giacomo Balla - Violon et Orchestre

Summary of This Score

Commissioned by the Tibor Varga International Violin Competition for its 2015 edition, this score by Hugues Dufourt offers a musical vision nourished by Italian futurism and, more precisely, by a reflection on the decomposition of the violinist's gesture. Like an accelerated sequence where movement becomes form, the writing seeks less illustration than the condensation of a transcendent execution, centered on energy, impact, and precision of playing.

The composer emphasizes virtuosity conceived as an "art of art": acute attention to the violin's mechanisms, bow expenditure, shifts, and accuracy of instrumental gesture. Whereas the great tradition aimed for a smooth and pure sound surface, this work embraces a more contemporary aesthetic, sensitive to grain, textures, and friction, making the instrumental challenge an expressive engine.

The first part presents itself as a cadenza entrusted to the soloist, focused on chords, rhythm, and articulations that disrupt metric divisions. The second part intensifies tension with chopped, jarring, contrasting figures, and writing that engages confrontations within the string orchestra. The third part explores fragile balances, often in paradoxical registers, and pushes the violin toward a virtuosity of harmonics (natural and artificial), requiring fine mastery of intonation, pressure, and contact point.

Written for the final of an international competition, this score is aimed at performers seeking a competition work that is both spectacular, precise, and deeply contemporary, where technique becomes language and each mode of playing contributes to the sonic dramaturgy. The work is dedicated to Enzo Restagno.

Technical specifications

Musical Genre

Classical

Composer	Hugues Dufourt	Language	French
Instrumentation	solo violin and chamber orchestra (strings)	Difficulty	advanced to virtuosic
Genre	contemporary score