Vertigo by Etienne Houben

Vertigo is a symptom where a person feels as if they or the objects around them are moving when they are not. In Etienne Houben’s Vertigo, a challenging and sometimes frenzied duet for flute and marimba, that feeling is elicited through the ingeniously frantic and exciting musical material. Throughout the work, Houben uses undulating melodic lines, driving sixteenth-note motives, and varied time signatures to create an unsettling feeling. This piece is recorded on the album Cocktail Maison by the Belgian artists Inge Smedts (flute) and Nico Schoeters (marimba).