The Atrocity Exhibition

The piece takes its title from the novel by J. G. Ballard and share with it the interest to the hidden layers of mental life.

To perform this highly complicated text correctly, musicians should become sensible machines, acquire a perfect precision of muscular activity, extreme tension and concentration.

Such a turn in the inner state of a performer (and ideally - a listener too) is supposed to be a 'meaning' of this music.

The task of the piece is to reveal the physiological nature of emotion, to deconstruct the idea of "language of feelings" by disassembling to pieces the engine which gives this language its power.

The piece plays the role of an elevator, which let us down to the low floors of nervous activity, on the levels of simple fundamental reactions, impulses and reflexes.

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The piece was commissioned by Pythian Games Composers Contest (Russia) and won both the Prize of Audience and the Prize of Musicians.

WP was in Saint-Petersburg, Russia, 28.04.2007, by eNsemble.

The piece was then performed in Russia (Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Nizhniy Novgorod) by eNsemble, Studio for New Music and Exposition XXI Ensemble.

https://soundcloud.com/aesech/the-atrocity-exhibition-for-violin-cello-and-piano