At particular times, strong gesture.
To respond to the concerns of contemporary music composers about the future of the sector (concerns that the crisis has only reinforced), Radio France wants to rethink its policy of commissions and creations.
“The crisis we are all going through throws a harsh light on the difficulty of writing composers today.
And even more in terms of the symphonic, ”
explains Michel Orier to
Le Figaro
.
The director of music at the Round House promises nothing less than the doubling of the budget allocated to them, with immediate effect.
“Concretely, we will go from € 150,000 to € 300,000 dedicated to commissions for new works”
, he says.
While specifying that it is not a question of additional State credits, but of a redistribution of the music budget to Radio France.
Essentially made possible by programming choices.
To read also: Michel Orier: "It is the whole of the cultural environment which is struck to the heart like never before"
The number of new musical works ordered by the radio, for one of its musical groups (the philharmonic orchestra of Radio France, the national orchestra of France, the choir and the Maîtrise of Radio France) or specialized partner groups , currently fluctuates between 50 and 60 depending on the year.
This season, 53 Radio France commissions should have been created, but due to the crisis their first world performance could not always take place.
Whether they are works by young composers or big names already well established, like Zad Moultaka, whose world premiere of the
concerto for kora
, scheduled for last October, had to be postponed.
Or Kaija Saariaho, whose nod to Beethoven's 250 years,
Beethoven is calling
should have been given in April as a French creation.
This doubling of the order budget will therefore make it possible to increase the number significantly.
“But also to better remunerate composers, whatever their age or their experience,”
insists Orier.
A revaluation that the latter have been calling for for several years.
Recalling the fragility of their profession.
Read also: Live my life as a composer
But this "reform" of musical creation at Radio France will not go through a simple budget increase.
Michel Orier is aware of this:
"This financial effort must be accompanied by genuine support and reflection on the diversity of the creative landscape, particularly in France."
Support which also involves the programming of concerts.
“We need to better articulate today's heritage and music.
This means creating a line in the usual programming that allows us to welcome more works from the last sixty years, which we can now consider, with hindsight, as markers of musical history. ”
It also means working to integrate and enhance more aesthetics.
From this perspective, Radio France wants to assert itself as a spearhead in supporting the emergence of new composers, including those who are still students at the conservatory.
By increasing the number of orders offered in partnership with France Musique to feed its Sunday program
Alla Breve
(orders which will also be better paid).
But also "
by strengthening parity in our choices
"
.
"
We're there on Alla Breve, but we can still make progress in terms of other orders and the Présences festival."
The public institution also wants to influence, in the years to come, in two sectors where France has a real tradition, but whose successors are struggling to make themselves heard today: symphonic arrangements of popular music, and film music. .
Michel Orier would like the radio to be a co-sponsor, each year, of one or two large symphonic soundtracks of a French film, in order to encourage producers and directors of the seventh art to have their music recorded in France rather than in London or in the Eastern European countries.
And that the Round House produce at least one major symphonic program every year - concert (s) and why not recording - with jazz or variety singers, whose orchestrations have been entrusted to a young arranger-composer.
To monitor progress in all these sectors, an internal commission will be created. It will be made up of the creative director at Radio France (Pierre Charvet), delegates from the various radio musical groups and representatives of musicians. But also external representatives, members of Sacem and the National Music Center. Michel Orier hopes through this new policy to reaffirm Radio France's first place in the landscape of international orders, and by leverage effect to attract more co-sponsors. While allowing French creation to shine more. “
Today, we are approximately 50% French composers among the commissions we place with Radio France. We would like to go a little further. Not out of chauvinism, but because the systems that exist abroad are often more closed to extraterritorial composers than we are at home,
he concludes
. And as a consequence, we have a greater responsibility vis-à-vis French composers, if we want their voice to always carry high and far in the still complicated years ahead ”
.
