MEDIAS
Press articles
Find here the press articles about the first edition of Trans Europe Express.
Diapason – In Seville, the Trans Europe Express project highlights women composers
Offering concerts, masterclasses and workshops, conferences and outreach activities, the international project combines established repertoire with works commissioned from women composers from the four participating countries: France, Hungary, Malta and Spain. During a stop in Seville, audiences were also treated to a few gems by Szigetvári and Mulsant.
Two highlights brought the latest Seville chapter of the Trans Europe Express project, led by violinist Agnès Pyka, to a close. The first — a conference aimed at placing women composers within their historical and geographical contexts — featured three of the composers honoured in the project speaking about their artistic journeys. French composer Florentine Mulsant reflected on key moments in the history of women composers at the Paris Conservatoire. Polish composer Anna Małek discussed her own path, spanning Poland, Austria and Spain, where she now lives. Meanwhile, Hungarian composer Andrea Szigetvári chose a short participatory performance with the audience (young masterclass participants and conservatory students), vividly illustrating some of her compositional gestures.
The short concert that followed featured movements from string trios by Véronique Vella — whose highly structured writing combines contrapuntal craftsmanship with echoes of dance forms — and Jean Cras, as each concert in the project places contemporary creation alongside works from the established repertoire.
Winter Light
The evening concert, the final event of this Spanish stage, also opened with Cras’s trio. Oscillating between modality and tonality, the score overflows with brief thematic motifs presented in varied ways but never truly developed, giving the impression of a somewhat loose architecture. The finale, however, stood out, especially through the inspired performance of the musicians (Agnès Pyka on violin, Jean Sautereau on viola, and Jordan Costard on cello).
Spanish composer Marian Marquez’s quintet The Weight of Winter Light adds Alfonso Rubio Marco’s flute and Antonio Salguero’s clarinet to the trio. Inspired by a poem by Emily Dickinson, it seeks to create a musical representation of winter light in four movements corresponding to the poem’s quatrains. There’s a Certain Slant of Light unfolds as suspended time, punctuated by occasional woodwind chirping; this is followed by the dark Refractions, an introspective Seal of Despair, built around a mournful semitone, before the final dissolution of No Scar Remains, which gradually fades into a kind of sonic spiral of haunting repeated notes. Despite these evocative qualities, the work ultimately feels somewhat unfinished.
Mastery of Form
Florentine Mulsant is a composer of both substance and structure, as beautifully demonstrated by her Sonata No. 5 for Solo Violin (2024), which Agnès Pyka performed with precision, discipline and enthusiasm across its three movements. A prelude built on the instrument’s open strings, gradually enriched with tremolos and string crossings, gives way to a theme and six variations. Its plaintive melody gradually thickens toward a final illumination. Fast and repetitive, the finale resembles a dance: a highly virtuosic perpetuum mobile bringing back, in a final wink, the opening motif of the prelude.
The same taste and command of architecture characterise Andrea Szigetvári’s remarkable Harmoniques perturbées (Disturbed Harmonics) for string trio and electronics. Four foundational Assises (“Foundations”), which blend instruments and electronics with remarkable effectiveness (the last one being improvised in real time by the trio), alternate with three more evocative movements: Liturgie de Bois (Wood Liturgy) recreates, through cracking and dry sounds, the noise of church pews from which a cello song emerges; crushed sounds, pizzicatos and swarming textures shape Fracas et sillage (Crash and Wake), while Déséquilibres (Imbalances) highlights relay-like gestures between instruments and electronics before gradually returning to calm.
The next Trans Europe Express project is already under consideration and may expand both geographically and in human scope. May it enjoy a long and successful future.
Seville, Francisco Guerrero Conservatory and CICUS Auditorium, April 17.
Resmusica – Agnès Pyka’s Trans Europe Express in Iberian territory
On the stage of the CICUS cultural institute, located in the heart of Seville’s Santa Cruz district, the Ensemble Des Équilibres performs alongside its Sevillian partners (Zahir Ensemble) for its final residency concert in Andalusia. The programme features, as Spanish premieres, three works by contemporary women composers, preceded by Jean Cras’s Trio.
Jean Cras (1879–1932), who died at the age of 53, simultaneously pursued careers as a naval officer and composer, even having a piano installed in his ship’s cabin. His Trio for violin, viola and cello, performed at the opening of the concert, is a substantial work whose finely crafted writing highlights both counterpoint and harmonic subtlety. Perhaps chosen for its Andalusian colours in the second movement with its modal scales, the Trio also evokes guitar-like sonorities (string pizzicatos) and popular song in the lively third movement, a scherzo-like section that draws applause from the audience. With its opening fugato and canons showcasing the interplay between the three performers, the virtuosic finale is no less exhilarating, delivered with fiery intensity.
Women’s creation
Dedicated to 20th- and 21st-century chamber music, Ensemble Des Équilibres and its director (and violinist) Agnès Pyka also aim to promote women composers across Europe through Trans Europe Express, a project running from September 2025 to April 2026. Three of the four participating countries are represented this evening through works that freely combine contemporary styles and writing techniques.
Hungarian composer Andrea Szigetvári, founder of the Hungarian Electroacoustic Music Society and currently a professor at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, is at the mixing desk for her mixed piece Harmoniques perturbées, combining string trio and electronics. The work is based on interaction between live instruments and pre-recorded sound materials triggered in real time by the composer. Between improvised sequences and fixed writing, the string parts employ extended techniques—granular textures, noise-based sounds, pointillistic constellations and sustained layers—extended and spatialised by the electroacoustic layer. Space becomes a third dimension in the dramaturgy of sound, shaping a fluid temporal experience that expands and contracts. The result is an immersive listening experience, a sonic phantasmagoria that engages the imagination.
Agnès Pyka’s violin benefits from slight amplification, acting as a poetic sonic trace in Florentine Mulsant’s Sonate de concert for solo violin. Present in the audience, the French composer—highly active on the musical scene with a catalogue now exceeding one hundred works—later comes on stage to introduce her new piece.
The fifth in a cycle of six solo violin sonatas (a tribute to Bach?), the three-movement work is dedicated to Agnès Pyka, who performs it with commanding authority and striking bow control. Sweeping across the violin’s open strings, the main theme of the Prelude unfolds with broad scope, projecting into luminous high registers and opening a wide harmonic field. The second movement, highly concentrated, presents a darker theme followed by six linked variations—a formal model often favoured by the composer—ultimately returning to light (Bach remains present). Energetic and driven, the finale’s fiery con fuoco tremolo is delivered with both precision and vitality.
Catalan composer Marian Márquez, born in Tarragona and based in Madrid, contributes The Weight of Winter Light, a quintet inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poem There’s a certain Slant of light. Alongside the string trio, flautist Alfonso Rubio Marco and clarinettist Antonio Salguero (members of the Sevillian Zahir Ensemble) expand the ensemble. Drawing on key words from the poem (winter light, seal of despair, etc.), the composer builds a narrative of sonic textures: roughened flows, lyrical surges, noise-based gestures (breath sounds, key tapping) and static layers where instrumental lines merge. A more generous acoustic environment might have further enhanced the delicate timbral work. Register interplay, subtle colour shifts (winds’ bisbigliando) and expressive silences shape this highly sensitive “cavatina”, exploring the depths of poetic thought.
If the first phase of this “sonic odyssey” with Ensemble Des Équilibres is nearly complete, a second journey is already being prepared—ever richer and more adventurous—aimed at fostering exchange, collaboration and the dissemination of contemporary creation.
Pour nous soutenir :
Prenez contact avec TRANS EUROPE EXPRESS,
par courrier, téléphone ou email,
soit en passant par notre formulaire.
Adresse :
Ensemble Des Equilibres / Accords en scène
chez Atelier Lardeur
79 rue du Cherche Midi
75006 Paris
Téléphone :
+33 (0)6 73 30 23 62
Mail :
contact@desequilibres.fr