Denis Levaillant
Direct

Piano solo


Mastering : Marc Piéra.

Production: Denis Levaillant.

Publisher: DenisLevaillantMusic/Frédéric Leibovitz Editeur.

The piano has always been one and complete to me : a territory open to all music, a busy crossroads intensively travelled upon.To be more specific, improvising on this hybrid instrument has always felt natural to me since childhood and the study of musical works from the past, onto encounters with musicians originating from foreign cultures, and it still does today through daily interaction with my composing.I believe that music lives way beyong genres and aesthetics, and it is the stubbornness of my instrument, wich even exceeds mine, that keeps reminding it to me.I accept its wandering, as long as I still can work my style : I am neither a jazzman, nor a « contemporary », but more simply a composer of my time.

Direct features four suites of works, composed independently from each other and witch, once assembled, make a very open program, prone to reach the widest audiences.In it, I put myself in the seat of a storyteller, exploring all sorts of techniques, including several of my own : playing forte with the una corda pedal, tracing monodic lines with opposite hands, along with expressive set of chords, abundant curves deriving from traditional ornament, half or quarter-pedal playing and pushed-in key resonance.But technique is not the only matter !

D.L.1996

FOUR AFRICAN STUDIES (1990)

à la kora - au balafon - à la sanza


I've adored African music since I was eighteen, when I started to « play jazz music » professionally in Paris, perticularly with the African musicians assembled by Franois Tusques in his orchestra.I've enjoyed its rhythms, obviously, but also its threnodies and polyphony.These pieces are an opportunity for me to successively evoke the kora, an instrument wich resembles a small harp, the balafon, ancestor to the xylophone, the djembe, noblest of all struck drums, and the sanza, better known in Africa as the « thumb piano », fitted with metal blades wich are made to vibrate with both thumbs.There is no hint to professorial musicology whatsoever ; this music is both popular and imaginary, just like gypsy music was to Liszt or Ravel.

A nice surprise:

http://www.sonymusic.fr


FOUR PROFANE LOVE CHANTS (1991)
Excerpt 1 - Excerpt 2 - Excerpt 3 - Excerpt 4


This is my emotional side : romance without words, melodies of today, asserting that music can touch the heart without oozing sentimentality.


FOUR PORTRAITS (1980)

9 Hi, Samson ! 5'22"


10 Earl's Pearls 1'49"


Excerpt

11 Theloni(o)us Melodius 4'34"

Excerpt
12 Like a duke 2'42"

In 1980, I composed Twelve Movements and Eight Portraits during the same period.What these suites have in common is that they were both created after I wrote the book L'Improvisation musicale (Pub.Actes Sud), somehow stemming from the decision to pay another visit to music writing, through piano gestures for the first, and through the filter of my memory for the latter.Here are four of these portraits, whose titles design the shapes of pianists who struck me in my teens, particularly Samson françois, the one who played Ravel while thinking jazz.


FOUR BAROQUE PRELUDES (1990)

13...aux accords... 2'14"

14...aux courbes... 2'50"

15....aux ornements... 2'51"

Excerpt

16 ...aux cadences... 2'33"

BIS

17 Cinquième chant d'amour profane 2'34"


18 Premier chant 5'56"

Baroque art fascinates me, and I find more than one similarity between our times and the early XVIIth century.A series of personal works that could be qualified as « neoprebarock » in a rather provocative way.And indeed, though very « contemporary », these timeless preludes show a certain taste for coulour, for ornaments used for their own sake, for juxtaposition rather than development, and for expressive symbolics.


DENIS LEVAILLANT- 15 november 1996