• duo concertante for two violins and electronics

   

• Duration: 9'
• Composed in 2011
• First performance: 15.07.12 violinists Siew Yi Li and Chen Zhangyi The Esplanade Recital Studio, Singapore.
• ISMN 979-0-9016515-1-7
• Parts: To purchase the score, please email rc@robertcasteels.com, or send a request to Orchard Post Office P.O. Box 714 Singapore

In this duo concertante for two violins and electronics, the instruments impersonate both the orator and the crowd during an electoral rally. The two violins are each other's alter ego. The electronics are the shadow of their double. The whirl of scales expresses as much the inner awe of the orator about to address the crowd as the indistinct noise of thousands of waiting women and men. The crowd swells and surges. The crowd grows impatient. At last the orator clears his throat and starts his address. What ensues is a dynamic between speaker and listeners. The speaker is in turn emphatic, eloquent, rhetorical, calm and optimistic. The listeners hammer a slogan of two crochets followed by two quavers, in turn gloomy, threatening, defying, persistent, enthusiast, impassioned. At the end of the speech, both the orator and the crowd unanimously voice one last time their slogan.