René Staar

Divertissement Suisse No 1 op. 10/1

A stay of almost five years in the Swiss UN city Geneva led to the conception of the composer’s first large-scale cyclical project, the “Divertissements Suisses”. The first of these “Divertissements” for three clarinets was composed in autumn 1983 and took its inspiration from the spiritual proximity to a place by Lake Geneva that had served Igor Stravinsky as refuge during the First World War—in the same way that classicism in general also influenced the piece. Two minuets, a two-part song form, and a rondo thoroughly follow the 250-year-old tradition of the Viennese classical divertimento, although the unique harmonic structure speaks the musical language of the late 20th century.