Nicolas Bacri

Deux Esquisses Lyriques op 103

Born in 1961, Nicolas Bacri began comprehensive musical studies at a very early age: the piano, but also the technical disciplines of harmony and counterpoint, and finally, from 1979, composition with Louis Saguer. Armed with a First Prize incomposition, he was resident at the Académie de France in Rome, in the Villa Medici between 1983 and 1985, and it was during this stay that he had a decisive encounter with Giacinto Scelsi. Nicolas Bacri is regularly played by well-known performersand institutions and among the many commissions Nicolas Bacri has received, mention should be made in particular of those from the French Ministry of Culture and Radio France as well asfrom many orchestras, soloists and festivals. For a while rootedin a post-Webernian æsthetic (Symphony n° 1, in 1984), the music of Nicolas Bacri has, since his Cello Concerto (1987), reintegrated a certain melodic continuity and has incorporated tonal language, going well beyond straightforward harmonicfunctions. A metaphysical quest for the Beautiful, a strong attraction for intensity in artistic expression and 'a dialectical alchemy of the Dionysiac and the Apollonian' round off the portrait of a composer who takes his place fully in a Westernhistorical perspective that, in all consciousness, he has chosen for himself and to which he rightfully adheres.