OR (Light): Couperin & Vivaldi

OR (Light) is a highly personal reimagining of François Couperin and Antonio Vivaldi by cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton. Conceived as a sequence of “freeze-frames” — incursions into time where each image generates its own light — the album unfolds in two contrasting yet interconnected parts: Les Prophéties and Notre Temps. The first part centers on Couperin’s Leçons de ténèbres, drawn from the Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah. These works, traditionally vocal, are transcribed and reshaped for cello. Wieder-Atherton explores prophecy as the time “before”: before destruction, before loss, before catastrophe. The cello’s sustained, vocal line is joined by the mist-like textures of an MS20 monophonic synthesiser (Marius Atherton), creating an atmosphere of suspended time and fragile expectation. In the Third Leçon, she records two cello voices herself, intertwining them like twins in dialogue. The second part turns to Vivaldi, confronting “our time” with dramatic immediacy. Arias from Farnace, Tieteberga, and Giustino, alongside movements from violin concertos, are transformed into a polyphony of cellos. At times faithful to the original score, at others radically reworked, these arrangements explore judgement, power, innocence, and chaos. Electric guitar, synthesizers, and percussion (Mahut) introduce contemporary resonance, bringing the noise of the modern world into confrontation with Baroque material. Recorded in September 2022 at the Abbaye de Noirlac, the album blurs boundaries between early music, transcription, and sound art. OR (Light) becomes both meditation and warning — a dialogue between prophecy and present, shadow and illumination.

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Sonia Wieder-Atherton - cello Marius Atherton – MS20 Synthesizer & Electric Guitar
Mahut – Percussion (Track 19)
Nicolas Worms – Synthesizer (Track 18)