La petite Danseuse :
Recording of the year

"A wonderful new ballet inspired by Degas’s famous sculpture of a young dance student. Every aspect of this production impresses. Levaillant’s music is an arresting mix of styles ranging from the baroque to modernism and jazzy figures via Late Romanticism and Impressionism. Ian Lace, Music Web International, December 2011

The Musicians of Bremen

After having set Jacques Prévert's Opéra de la Lune to music in 2008, performed by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France and Jacques Bonnaffé (Gallimard-Jeunesse, 2008), Denis Levaillant remains on the shores of childhood and is again joined by the actor for The Musicians of Bremen, based on the tale by the Brothers Grimm, which he translated, adapted and set to music.

L'âne fidèle - La forêt - L'horrible concert

Le dernier Pèlerinage

I put together this program in 1986 for the centennial of Liszt's death.
This year I have recorded it to celebrate the bicentennial of his birth.

For me, the piano works written by this eternally "young composer" in his last years are like a reflection of his whole life. He looks at himself in a mirror and sees all the facets of his character come back to life, from the salon virtuoso to Mephisto the enchanter, from Don Juan the seducer to the solitary abbé. And the harder he looks, the more his own image blurs.
There is often a tendency to take these works either for what they are not yet – and then there is interest solely in what they announce in the evolution of the musical language – or for what they no longer are. And comparing them to the youthful works, one feels the expression of an exhausted, morbid energy and thus fears their silences. Personally, I think just the opposite and take them for what they are: magnificent, varied pieces of music, sometimes as virtuosic as the works of his beginnings, always of great purity, as if each note, on the edge of nothingness, were calling for the next, thereby creating life for ever after.

Bagatelle sans tonalité - Nuages gris - En rêve

The Little Dancer

This full-evening ballet will be released in DVD Blu-ray, Full HD, and NTSC, May 20th, Arthaus production.

La peite danseuse de Degas chez Naxos

Broadcasting on the Mezzo Channel, particularly Sunday 22th at 6.30 pm and Sunday June 5th at 8.30 pm.

"An inspired and visually ravishing creation. This ballet deserves to go from success to success. »
Ian Lace-Musicweb-international.com-Juin 2011

Concert-lecture

To echo the success of the second edition of the DVD-book LE PIANO, Denis Levaillant has devised a concert-lecture on the theme of ‘piano invention’. How has piano music followed the evolution of the instrument from the time of Bach up to the present day? What are the founding values of ‘pianism’? In what direction is today’s creation headed? How has jazz influenced written works? Backed up by a large number of examples drawn from the repertoire and from his own catalogue, Denis Levaillant endeavours to answer these intriguing questions.

The first concert-lecture has be given in Strasbourg at 3 p.m. on 13 November at the Médiathèque Strasbourg Centre, in the framework of the ‘Jazz d'Or’ Festival.

The second has be given at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional in Boulogne-Billancourt on 16 November at 10 a.m., in the framework of ARIAM programming: ARIAM-idf.com

A NEW CD

MUSIC IS THE FILM

01 Tormented Soul - 03 From Above - 06 Another Day

LE PIANO

A new edition of LE PIANO is published - for now, just in French. Since the first edition (Lattès, 1986), it is seen as a reference book.
This new edition is enlarged by a DVD including two films: The basic principles of piano technique, and Piano Solo Piano, a recital performed by Denis Levaillant in Paris, including large excerpts of his piano works catalog: Douze Mouvements, Etudes Africaines, Un Petit Rien-du-tout, Images-Etudes, Jazz Faces.

Discover the table

SARABANDE

I recorded last year the original soundtrack for BLINDSPOT, and I was asked to record the very famous Haendel’s «Sarabande» (everybody can remember the beautiful soundtrack for the Kubrick’s Barry Lindon.
I’m glad to give you this recording, as a gift for visiting my web!.

Download the Sarabande

Listen to

The OPERA OF THE MOON

Listen to

Ouverture Valse des moutons

STILL TOPICAL,

This opera created in 1990 shows itself more than ever as a premonitory work today: fictitious money, junk bonds, bail out, fear, debts, all the news, every day, seems to be extracted from the libretto!

NEW : Four video excerpts available. Just click here