« I have known Clara Maïda’s compositions for years and I am impressed by its sound richness, its originality and the expressive intensity of this music. »

Helmut Lachenmann, March 2007

« Clara Maïda’s music is not easy, but it amply rewards close attention. The formal processes are fascinating. They are often using unusual, even « found » material as the basis for transformations which go their own way, leaving in their wake a dialectic between recognizable objects, very faintly discerned, and a formalized « dance of the elements ». Finding form is rewarding to the subjectivity of at least this listener for the very reason that it is a discovery that is made unaided by any traditional props, one has the feeling that it needs to be done ex nihilo. That a strong negative can give birth to a new and strong positive is one of the important functions of true art. Clara Maïda’s art is in the vanguard of pioneers who are stretching our culture to its new phase. »

Jonathan Harvey, December 2006

« I consider Clara Maïda as a composer with a composition profile of her own (autonomous, independent) [...] Her works are virtuoso and highly expressive and - what convinces me particularly - : these works take also aesthetical risks, [...] original works which deserve to be heard. »

Helmut Lachenmann, September 2005

« I have a considerable admiration for your writing! [...] The endeavour to pulverize the form and to re-establish it in a sort of flux is most interesting. Thank you !»

Jonathan Harvey, July 2004

« Iniji » by the young composer Clara Maïda, musical piece of half an hour or so, is based on a text by Henri Michaux. This creation uses onomatopoeias as a sound material while adding the work on space, sounds, images, lights, thus inventing a poetic environment.

Taktik, May 1999

« Il libro del sogno » by Clara Maïda, ultimate discovery of the evening, displayed a very tense instrumental writing, with sharp ridges. A work which would have deserved to be placed at the beginning of the evening.

La Provence, November 1997

At La Criée, a premièred work « Io », by Clara Maïda, State and GMEM commission, called for a piano, played by Nathalie Négro, a cello, Bernard Amrani, flutes, played by David Dreyfus, clarinets, by Magali Rubio, and then, for electro-acoustics.
The instrumental conversation, diversified, complementary, with no whimsical effects, gradually imposed its unity, its logic, and especially a poetic permeation closely related with the electro-acoustic part.
Quiet at first, playing with the timbres, some brief melodic fragments, mixed with a score of sounds sometimes evoking those of a giant glass harmonica, and through which comes several times a female voice, distant and spectral, the works then amplifies and gets more feverish, more clashing.
Before ending, all the instruments become silent, in slow and obsessional bells sounding like a toll up to the conclusive perdandosi.
Let’s say it again, a very poetic general impression, in which lyricism played its part, and which will justify the reception made to the composition, to her author and to the performers.

Le Méridional, April 1997

From a stage to another one

« Io » by Clara Maïda explodes in echoes, mirrors in which the senses, the sounds, the colours echo each other in a Baudelairean way.

L’éveil, April 1997

« Io » (I, in Italian) is a GMEM commission, for instrumental ensemble and electro-acoustics, through which Clara Maïda purses her interests in the place of the composer-creator in the work and questions the unconscious as a form of production of meaning. As the titles indicates, Maïda did her « music self-portrait ».

Al Dante, April 1997