Agnès Pyka’s Trans Europe Express in Iberian territory
| April 21, 2026 | RESMUSICA |
On the stage of the CICUS cultural institute, located in the heart of Seville’s Barrio Santa Cruz, Ensemble Des Équilibres performs alongside its Sevillian partners (Zahir Ensemble) for the final concert of its Andalusian residency. The programme features, as Spanish premieres, three works by contemporary women composers, preceded by Jean Cras’s Trio.
Jean Cras (1879–1932), who died at the age of 53, simultaneously pursued careers as a naval officer and composer, even having a piano installed in his ship’s cabin. His Trio for violin, viola and cello, which opens the concert in four movements, is a substantial work whose finely crafted writing highlights both counterpoint and harmonic subtlety. Whether chosen for its Andalusian colours in the second movement, with its modal scales, the Trio also evokes guitar-like sonorities (string pizzicatos) and popular song in the lively third movement, a scherzo that draws applause from the audience. With its opening fugato and canons showcasing the interplay of the three performers, the virtuosic finale is no less exhilarating, delivered with blazing intensity.
Women’s creation
Dedicated to 20th- and 21st-century chamber repertoire, Ensemble Des Équilibres and its director (and violinist) Agnès Pyka also pursue the mission of promoting women composers across Europe through Trans Europe Express, a project running from September 2025 to April 2026. Three of the four participating countries are represented this evening through works that freely combine contemporary styles and writing techniques.
Hungarian composer Andrea Szigetvári, founder of the Hungarian Electroacoustic Music Society and currently a professor at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, operates the mixing desk for the performance of her mixed piece Harmoniques perturbées, combining string trio and electronics. The idea is to create interaction between the two sound sources and establish a complementarity between the live trio and pre-recorded sound samples triggered in real time by the composer. Between improvised sequences and fixed writing, the string parts employ extended techniques: granular textures, noisy sounds, point-like constellations or sustained layers extended and spatialised by the electroacoustic layer. Space here becomes a third dimension of the musical dramaturgy, within a fluctuating temporality that expands and contracts. The fusion is effective, resulting in an immersive listening experience, a sonic phantasmagoria addressing the listener’s imagination.
Agnès Pyka’s violin benefits from slight amplification, acting as a poetic sonic trace in Florentine Mulsant’s Sonate de concert for solo violin. Present in the audience, the French composer—highly active on the contemporary music scene and whose catalogue now exceeds one hundred works—comes on stage to speak about her new piece.
The fifth in a cycle of six solo violin sonatas (a tribute to Bach?), each dedicated to a performer, the three-movement work is written for Agnès Pyka, who approaches it with commanding authority and striking bow control from the outset. Sweeping across the violin’s open strings, the main theme of the Prelude unfolds with broad scope, projecting into luminous high registers and opening up the harmonic field. The second movement, highly concentrated, presents a darker theme followed by six linked variations (a formal model the composer favours), ultimately returning to light (Bach remains present). Energy emerges from a furious tremolo in the final con fuoco, which Pyka renders with both precision and driving vitality.
Marian Márquez, a Catalan composer born in Tarragona and based in Madrid, presents The Weight of Winter Light, a quintet inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poem There’s a certain Slant of light. Alongside the string trio, flautist Alfonso Rubio Marco and clarinettist Antonio Salguero—members of the Sevillian Zahir Ensemble—join the ensemble. Drawing on key words from the poem (winter light, seal of despair, etc.), the composer constructs a narrative texture combining rough sonic surfaces, lyrical surges, noise-based gestures (breathing, key tapping) and static layers where instrumental lines merge. A more generous acoustic environment might have enhanced the fine timbral work. The interplay of registers, subtle colouration (winds’ bisbigliando) and eloquent silences shape this sensitive “cavatina”, exploring the depths of poetic thought.
If the first stage of this “sonic odyssey” with Ensemble Des Équilibres is now nearly complete, a second journey is already being prepared—more ambitious and adventurous—aimed at fostering exchange, sharing and the dissemination of contemporary creation.
By Michèle Tosi