La Barque au rêve clair

I was asked to compose a short concerto work based on a popular Chinese love song called Jasmine. The original song’s words tell about a jasmine flower off ered by a young man to his lover before he leaves to fight in the war. A long time later, as in a dream or a fairy tale, the flower speaks and then dies, revealing that the young lover himself had died on the battlefield. I thought about the barque as a medieval image for the ecstasy of love, and the water on which it drift s as an imperfect mirror of the song resonating as in a dream. Thierry Pécou