Marton Illes: Bowed Spaces

Born in Budapest in 1975 and based in Germany, composer Marton Illes studied with Detlev Muller-Siemens and Wolfgang Rihm. In 2020, he composed the violin concerto Vont-ter for Patricia Kopatchinskaja, a long-time partner who performs his music with total commitment: "She gives the impression that music can be tactile, truly three-dimensional, to the point that you could almost touch it, that each gesture has it's own colour, temperature, smell, taste," says Illes. Sirt-ter, "space filled with tears", is a cello concerto: "I make it moan, scream or even roar hysterically in order to draw out the vocal qualities capable of communicating human pain." In Nicolas Altstaedt, "I found the ideal performer, who grasps the dark drama of this subject with existential intuition and makes it resonate with primitive force." Rajzok I consists of tuning the strings of 24 instruments to different quarter-tone intervals. A very unusual and fascinating total scordatura... In Three Sketches, electronic music blends with the sound of the violin, multiplying the sensations and sound textures. Fascinated by the human psyche and the processes that take place in the human body, Illes develops music that lives, speaks and breathes.