Proverbs

We know them to be masters of American repetitive music, through their collaborations with the choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker or their recent production of Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach. For their first concert in Nancy, the musicians of Ictus join forces with the Opera's orchestra to explore some of minimalism's finest pages.

The concert presents four key 20th century works, chosen for their introspective qualities and strung together as if they were a single work.

Steve Reich's Tehilim forms the core of the programme, the centerpiece of an anthology of inventions, around which gravitate the genuine musical UFOs The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives and The Sinking of the Titanic by British composer Gavin Bryars.

In his famous piece Proverb for voice and ensemble, Steve Reich draws on a very brief text by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein: “How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life!” Such is the watchword of an evening in which music unfolds from almost nothing to become almost everything.