This piece has been composed on request of Beaufort, all soloists of the Belgian National Orchestra, who recorded this work on the CD Hidden Facts available on Etcetera Records.
I composed Interaction at the request of Bram Nolf, oboe solo of the National Orchestra and artistic intendant of the wind quintet 'Beaufort'. It was recorded on CD by the Etcetera Records label under the title 'Hidden Facts' Flemish Music for Woodwinds and Piano. The work was allowed to last around five minutes and is absolute concert music; it has no program and mainly wants to explore the musical possibilities of interaction between the piano and the five wind instruments: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn.
It opens from a low pedal note in the piano with alternating eighth notes, the oboe opens with a first cantilene which is answered further on by the clarinet, bassoon and horn, the flute comments. The initial situation is resumed; now the clarinet takes over playing notes from the piano. The dialogue between the oboe and the other instruments takes on more direction and tension and leads to a first provisional climax of this introduction, after which the piano starts with an obscure fast ostinato. In homophonic blocks the quintet juxtaposes rhythmic short punctuations, the general atmosphere is intense, exciting, rhythmically asymmetrical.
A first intermezzo suddenly breaks this off in a p atmosphere; the piano gives a subtle broken chord to which each time an instrument answers a phrase, first the clarinet, then the flute, then the horn and the bassoon in unison. Then, like a Beethovenian technique, the dialogue is switched and the quintet plays now the sustained tones as a broken chord and the piano will sing a phrase on it in octaves.
The quintet concludes abruptly in unison, and a second ostinato section unfolds, starting in the low register of the piano. Tension is built up, and a little further, the short rhythmic homophonic pulses of the quintet return. The second section is very similar to the first ostinato section but has a more intense atmosphere and then becomes a new section that is mainly polyphonic in nature and takes on a chromatic character. At the basis is a chromatic, steadily ascending line in the left hand of the piano; above it, short imitations develop in all parts with the aim of reaching a new climax. A new kind of intermezzo unfolds in three-quarter time but with continuous crotchets in the piano with interventions of clarinet, oboe, and flute. A little further on, the bassoon takes over the crotchets of the piano, which will now play a lyrical phrase extensively in octaves.
The code section first gives a reminiscence of the short rhythmic blocks from the beginning; the piano contrasts this with a tense cluster that gradually accelerates and culminates in a written acceleration in which all six instruments close together agitatedly. In this piece 'interaction,' the musical abstract progression or narrative is the essence of this work, the way in which motifs, chords, and rhythms relate to each other and merge into the sextet or into an individual instrument.
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