The figure of the enchantress Alcina has its roots in medieval chivalric poems, which were themselves inspired by the myths of Antiquity, rich in tales of transformation. The two ‘Sieste’ concerts in the Autumn Constellation, conceived in collaboration with pianist Jean-Michel Dayez, present music that extends these ancient motifs into the modern era.

In 1951, Benjamin Britten drew inspiration from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to compose a cycle for solo oboe. Each movement evokes a mythological figure and their experience, often marked by violence — Pan pursues Syrinx, Niobe sees her children killed by the gods, Narcissus falls in love with his own reflection, and Arethusa flees to escape the threat of rape… To give presence to these human experiences crystallised in images, Britten chose the monody of an instrument which, through its history, connects us to humanity as a whole: forms of the oboe have been found throughout the world for millennia.

More than 300 years before these Metamorphoses, another quest for universality can be heard in the lyrical abstraction of Johann Sebastian Bach: the richness and coherence of the tonal world, as well as polyphony as a reflection on the evolution of thoughts in dialogue. Each fugue in The Well-Tempered Clavier begins with an initial idea around which ever-renewed counterpoints are devised. Jean-Michel Dayez sees in this a utopian potential: “A true ode to creation, these works are also an invitation to dialogue, to encounter, to unity in diversity, and to the refinement of thought through listening to the voice of the other.”