NEXUS
After Mémoire de Vague (viola and four instruments), Waves (viola and ensemble), Flexus (flute and ensemble), and Plexus (oboe and ensemble), Nexus, for instrumental ensemble with clarinet solo, is part of a series of concerts that could be called concerti grossi a una parte, because it is not exactly a group of soloists opposed to a ripieno, but a soloist creating musical situations with a fixed or evolving character. Like the four preceding pieces, Nexus is characterized by the virtuosity attached to the history of the concertos, with a double (here the saxophone), and perhaps therein lies the only cyclic effect constituted by this group of works.
The material, first provided by the soloist, functions according to nine basic patterns that are recycled in a network of eleven sections divided by eight, and grouped in three parts. One might see in these numeric axioms one of many endless deconstructions of tripartite forms twisted by history (lively, slow, lively and its many variations). Nevertheless, the relationship between these sections, whose length is crushed, makes more use of the momentaneous intertwining of successive elements or the projection in time of overlaying elements, than the declaratory opposition characteristic of instruments of symphonic style. All considered, each dialogues with itself or the others (or thinks it does), in union as well as in conflict.
In this context, the form travelled is a knot (Nexus) of situations deployed in a temporality whose elements are successive and simultaneous.
D. Cohen