33 - HAYDN Early and late Sonatas

CD DLM 3018
2018
Editor’s Note:
“The corpus of the some sixty keyboard sonatas by Joseph Haydn is absolutely fascinating in that it links the Late Baroque and nascent Romanticism, whilst accompanying the birth of a new instrument, the pianoforte. In this CD, composer-pianist Denis Levaillant gives a highly personal, committed version of two youthful sonatas (Hob. nos. 13 and 14) and four late sonatas (41, 48, 49 and 51). Here, this music, so alive and rich in inventions, is treated like a present-day text, with considerable clarity of articulation, a keen sense of rhythm, and quite varied colours, in a very clear, precise, sound recording, both close-up and spacious.”

Extrait : Sonate HOB.XVI: 51 Finale presto

31 - City organix

Digital CD Cézame CEZ 4191
2015
Downtempo & electroacoustic underscores. 
I asked to Mathias Delplanque to build rhythmic patterns and electronic atmospheres from my own sounds, recorded in my studio (essentially from the sessions of The Musicians of Bremen): the obtained sound thus remains very ‘organic’.

Night Owls

30 - Cinematic Edge Vol. 1

Digital CD on Cézame CEZ 4148
2014
What wrote the publisher: “Denis Levaillant has put together a collection of cutting edge pieces from composers and performers with a wealth of experience on stage, in theatre and in movies and with a talent for thinking outside the box. The result: a vertiginous high-wire trip on the borders of electro and acoustic.”

Landslide

29 - The Fear Factory

CD en ligne Cézame CEZ 4097
2012
What wrote the publisher: “Denis Levaillant exposes our fears, forebodings, private anguish and public trauma. Powerful and disturbing but subtle and provocative. With typical mastery of nuance the composer allies percussion and sonic pictures making this album an indispensable audiovisual tool.”

Psychopath
This title was synchronized in the Rihanna’s video Bitch Better Have My Money (2015).

28 - Le dernier pèlerinage

CD DLM 2311
2011
Denis Levaillant plays Franz Liszt
I created this program in 1986, for the centenary of the death of Liszt.
The works for piano written by this eternal ‘young composer’ in his last years are for me as a reflection of all his life. He looks in a mirror and sees all his characters reliving, from the virtuoso to Mephisto the charmer, from the seductive Juan to the solitary abbot. And the more he looks, the more his own image fades.

Bagatelle sans tonalité

27 - Music is the Film

CD Universal
2009
This album is a tribute to the cinema. Every title of this suite for chamber ensemble was conceived for a liked movie. The recollection aroused the invention. I wrote the original music of an imaginary movie.

Home Lands
This title was synchronized in the feature film Blue is the Warmest Color by Abdellatif Kechiche, Palme d’Or at the Festival de Cannes 2013.

26 - Modern Acoustic Sketches

CD Koka Media 2306
2008
I had the pleasure to record great soloists for this project: László Hadady (hb), Jean-Marc Foltz (clar), Paul Riveaux (bassoon), Jean-Michel Goury (sax), Olivier Innocenti (acc), Marie-Thérèse Grisenti (vlc), Jean-Jacques Avenel (db).

The dutch director Ad Bol was the first to synchronize some of those tracks in his feature film Blindspot in 2008.

25 - Drone Music

CD Cézame CEZ 4051/4052
2007
What wrote the publisher: “The function of drones is to create a discreet climate or dimension, enhancing the visual and narrative flow of a production”.

Nuclear Menace

24 - Landscape with piano

CD Cézame CEZ 4045
2006
What wrote the publisher: “Simply, and with emotion "Landscapes with Piano" is a kind of intimate geography lesson describing places from mythology and from daily life, each one evoking a color, a climate, a memory, a feeling…” Excerpts of Chants d’amour, Le Jardin du sanglier, Etudes Africaines, La Petite danseuse, Un petit rien-du-tout, Piano Songs.

Swansea

23 - Documentary Line

CD Cézame CEZ 4023 à 4029
2003
What wrote the publisher: “We've been rummaging through the Cezame archives and we've come across some real treasures. Previously unreleased titles from composers who've been with us from the very beginning - Marc-Olivier Dupin, Armand Frydman, Didier Goret, Bruno Letort, Denis Levaillant, Frédi Loth and Gérard Torikian - Nuggets of pure delight.”
Excerpts of Drama Symphony, TechnoSpacePiano, ElektroSpacePiano, Chants d’amour profane, Piano Transit, Easy-Uneasy, La Femme sur la Lune, Drama Symphony.

L'Homme dans l'espace

22 - Dark

CD Koka Media KOK 2234
2002
Commissioned by Frédéric Leibovitz, this album fast became a standard of the kind of “drama”, particularly appreciated in the United States and in England. Electroacoustic composition designed for the synchronization in features films and documentaries, using excerpts of concert works: Drama Symphony, Piano transit, Praise of the Water, ElektroSpacePiano, Easy/Uneasy, Les Heures défaites). The first one to have used some tracks of this album for his movie is Enki Bilal for Immortal.

Atomic Reaction

21 - Figures

CD CMG 11
2001
« Musician open to every current, and whose capacity for integrating diverse layers of music would have pleased the pianist and theorist Ferrucio Busoni, Denis Levaillant is represented here by chamber works dedicated to some of his performers friends” Pierre Michel.
First studio recording of chamber works by top notch soloists : Quatuor Arpeggione, Quintette Nielsen, Jean-Marc Foltz, Quatuor Xasax, Quintette Just’à’Cinq.

Le Clair, l’obscur Mouvement 3

20 - Direct

CD Tangram TC 6042
2000
“The piano has always been one and complete for me: a territory open to all music, a busy crossroads intensively travelled upon. Direct features four suites of works, composed independently from each other and which, once assembled, make a very open program, prone to reach the widest audiences.”
Quatre études africaines, Quatre chants d’amour profane, Quatre portraits, Quatre préludes baroques: this solo concert was recorded at the Maison de la Culture d’Amiens, June 21st 1994.

Hi, Samson!

18/19 - Out There/Ailleurs

Double CD Cézame CEZ 4019
1999
“A contemporary musical journey through classical and electronic music.”

First Step

17 - L'Etrange

CD Cézame CEZ 4015
1998
“Weird, strange, odd... what's the matter with this music ?”

L'inquiétant

16 - Shorts !

CD Cézame CEZ 4014
1997
“Stings, links and bridges in the early electroacoustic avant-garde style.”

Le temps passé

15 - Théâtres

CD Cézame CEZ 4012
1996
“Contemporary music made for theater pieces.”

La Forêt se venge

14 - Génériques potentiels

CD Cézame CEZ 4009
1995
“One of the most famous reference of contemporary music for audiovisual programs”

Jazzy Trick

13 - NEXT

CD Koka Media KOK2072
1993
Commissioned by Frédéric Leibovitz, this album became a real reference in the production because certainly one of the very first realizations of contemporary music for films. We find there remixes of many concert works : Eloge de l’eau, DD Blue Gold Diggers, Speakers, Inside.

Insinuation

12. Musiques pour les voix

CD Thésis THC 82054
1992
“For modern voices, I invent modern stories. Text and music interweave through the voice. I like to go through the different degrees of their encounters - melodrama, musical, song, opera. Feeling and emotion, flesh and words, arguments and dreams: this division has fascinated us since the Ancients and will never leave us.”
Les Pierres noires, for twelve voices. Le Baigneur, chamber opera. Speakers, for two actors and twelve singers.

Les Pierres noires 1

11. Musiques pour la danse

CD Thésis THC 82053
1991
“The new ballet music experiments with all other relationships between body and imagination, it becomes music for the stage, it is a full dramatic actor, dispensing with a text in order to say.”
In this album you can find four musics written for contemporary ballets: Passage de l’heure bleue, for Stéphanie Aubin and le Groupe de Recherche chorégraphique de l’Opéra national de Paris; Les Pas perdus et Aranzaquil, for Dominique Petit (Maison de la danse de Lyon) ; Dérive, for Brigitte Lefèvre and le Théâtre du Silence.

Allez, entrez !

10. Musiques pour le piano

CD Thésis THC 82051
1991
“For me the piano is more than an instrument: it is a matter created every day, a support for the imagination and part of my identity. This record bears witness to this.”
Douze mouvements, for solo piano; Piano transit, piano and electronics; Souvenirs de Félicité, Radio play.

Mouvement 1 Monodie

9. Musiques pour le théâtre

CD Thésis THC 82038
1990
“Normally, once the curtain falls on a production for the last time, the music is never heard again. These compositions have survived and, along with my other works, are now in my catalogue.”
Three productions by Alain Françon:
Les Menteries du style was written for the production by the Comédie Française in 1986 of Corneille’s Menteur, Suite pour Hedda for the 1987 production of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler at the Théâtre de l’Athénée in Paris, Bienvenue au Palais Mascotte for the 1988 production of Enzo Corman’s Palais Mascotte at the Théâtre de la Bastille in Paris.

Sonnerie

8. Passages

CD Thésis THJ 82016
1986
Recorded in the studio Davout by Gérard Chiron, the Denis Levaillant’s trio with Barre Phillips (double bass) and Barry Altschul (drums) writes its innovative and virtuoso vision of the trio jazz. This trio performed until 1993 with a lot of success a program entitled The Passengers of the delta.

Rhythmic Training

7. Barium Circus

LP Nato 382
1984
Produced by Jean Rochard, this sextet mixes cheerfully detailed writing and free but precise improvisation.

Entrée des Athlètes aux chevaux noirs

6. Six séquences pour Alfred Hitchcock

LP Nato 304
1984
Revival in CD 1993 (53041.2) and 1995 (112 131)
Record shared with Joëlle Léandre, British summer time ends, Jac Berrocal, Annick Nozati and Alan Tomlinson in homage to master of the suspense. The chosen work is entitled Question de principe, which resumes elements of Inside, with the soloists of l’Itinéraire.

5. Direct

LP Nato 140
1983
First program of solo piano, recorded by the excellent producer Jean Rochard with Daniel Deshays. This program is made of portraits of liked pianists and composers of jazz (Samson François, Duke, Thelonious, Earl Hines, Bud, Paul Bley …)

Un jour sur les conseils de Paul

4. Trans-Musiques

LP Freebird
1979
Recording of a concert given on October 6th and 7th, 1978 in front of more than 3000 people in La Villette, organized by the Libération newspaper. The duet Levaillant / Rigaud is next to the cream of the French cutting edge jazz of the time: Malherbe, Pauvros, Boni, Marais, Jaume, Lockwood, Portal.

3. Instable

LP Ad Lib 2002
1978
Auto-production of the duet Levaillant/Rigaud. This program had a lot of success, and the duet played in big festivals. Written/Improvised, Contemporary/Modal.

Caroline

2. Attention l'armée

LP Live Records TDC 05
1975
First auto-production, first LP., with Kirjuhel (voice), Carlos Andréou (voice), Jean-Jacques Avenel (db), Jean Méreu (tp), Pierre Rigaud (sax), Gérard Tamestit (vln), Jacques Mahieux and Christian Ville (drums), Denis Levaillant (composition and piano).

Attention… l'armée

1. Son dernier Tango

1973
At the time of the big demonstrations in France against the “law Debré”, an EP of two tracks produced by the Antimilitarist Committee and recorded with Mahjun and the Saravah team. Sold in demonstrations, fast exhausted. An experience of slam prematurely.