Major Yvon Ducene wanted a new lush and colourful composition for his Guides military band, with André Waignein as its composer. Early in 1979 the composer began his assignment and in October of the same year, the finished full score was on the music stands of this prestigious military band of the Belgian Army.The introduction (Grave) mirrors an atmosphere full of serenity in which the theme, played by the oboes and the English horn is predominant and immediately holds the listener spell-bound. It is taken up again as central element of the slow movement.The Allegro breaks away from the quiet passion of the introduction. Here, the band can really show its capabilities to the full. Based on a very precise rhythm, an idiom of sudden desperation and adversity develops which, fused with a crushing aggression, culminates in a kind of eruption, soon calmed down by a Lento : peace and quiet has returned thanks to a melody by the horns and soon taken over by the clarinets. In the meantime, the saxophone - an instrument full of human emotion - express the main spatial dimension in contemporary psyche. Following a harmonic transition the brass-players take up the theme again in forte whilst the basses and the woodwinds intertwine in technical arabesques.The movings of the mind and the heart get an audible and almost touchable shape in the ensuing Allegro, a movement characterised by a rhythmic dialogue in which the whole orchestra participates and where the exposition contains a wealth of sound and technical contrasts. The Lento finally uses the central theme of the slow movement again, with some occasional references to the two allegros. The last page is of unprecedented grandeur. All the instruments display their most beautiful sound which were named by Jacques Ferschotte, when speaking about Honneger, "harmonies d'intensités" harmonies of the unmeasurable.
Duration: 14:30
