RITORNELLO IN BLUE，pour trio à vent（2018）

Ritornello in Blue is the sister work to Spiral in Blue for wind quintet，which was premiered by Les Vents Français in autumn 2016. It also constitutes one of a series of works，the other two being Antiphona in Blue and En Bleu et Blanc，that I composed thereafter. Spiral in Blue was composed during my stay at the Villa Medici in Rome under the influence of the flocks of birds twirling in the sky that I could see from my window in the hilltop Villa Medici and of my everyday life in Rome. My stay there had a major influence on me as a composer，and it was several years later，under the leaden，cloudy skies of wintertime Paris，that I wrote Ritornello in Blue as I reminisced on my previous life in Rome.
Such being the background to this work，it incorporates several motifs that appear in the other works in this series. The loud tutti passage with which the piece begins evokes my startled impressions when I first arrived in Rome. The descending stepwise motif suggests the walk from the Villa Medici down to the Piazza di Spagna，while the chorale played in the low register alludes to the magnificent Roman dusk. These sections are interspersed with virtuosic passages allocated to each of the three instruments. ‘Ritornello’ in the title of the work refers on the one hand to the subtle interchange between solo and tutti passages and，on the other，it implies a nostalgic retrospection directed from Paris to Rome.