Denis Levaillant PRESS KIT

DENIS LEVAILLANT IN PARIS 2005-2006

"After a break devoted to composition and travelling, Denis Levaillant, an original, "off-piste" composer, open to the world, returns to us with a season in three acts unfolding on three major Parisian stages with, as a bonus, a premiere in Ville d'Avray.

First of all, a revival of the symphonic ballet La Petite danseuse, which, in itself, attests to the success the work obtained last season at the Opéra Garnier. An additional 18 performances will be given in December.

Next come two premieres: the first, at the Théâtre du Rond-Point, will allow us to hear the composer at the piano, in company with the actress Irina Dalle (already an accomplice in his opera O.P.A. MIA, first performed in 1990 at Avignon) on a text by writer Maurice Roche: Un petit rien-du-tout...

The other premiere is a work for orchestra and speaker based on L'opéra de la lune by Jacques Prévert, author of numerous children's tales (this one was written in 1953), commissioned by Radio France for the Orchestre Philharmonique and actor Jean Rochefort.

It is not coincidence that brings Denis Levaillant into association with these two authors, they too unclassifiable, resistant to all academicism and adept at using the terribly effective weapons of humour, style and conscience.

This is doubtless his way of signifying to us that it will never be easy to file him away under some reassuring heading. Feeling related to Maurice Ravel, he confirms and proclaims his independence and, at the same time, his openness to others and the appeal of collaborating with other artists, be they writers, choreographers, visual artists or circus performers. He returns, still faithfully following his path that is both singular and plural, and that's all for the best, as we need this breath of fresh air."

Denis LEVAILLANT, some words...

"Today I feel the need to get back to the stage and the piano. For the past few years, I’ve devoted myself entirely to symphonic writing: in 2002 I composed the ballet La Petite danseuse (100 minutes of orchestral music) for the Paris Opera; this year, I continued with L’opéra de la lune (45’), which I have just finished, and in the meantime, I fulfilled numerous commissions from soloist friends (Manhattan Rhapsody for saxophonist Jean-Michel Goury, L’Andalouse for accordionist Olivier Innocenti and Le Voyage tzigane, my Quartet No.3, for the Arpeggione Quartet).

I must say that, after so many collaborative experiments in live entertainment (I calculated that La Petite danseuse was the fortieth production to which I have contributed as a composer!), I needed to concentrate on my own work. I thus went deeper into melodic expression and found a number of personal solutions to contemporary questions of harmony, colour, space and rhythm. Today I have a catalogue boasting highly varied works, which, in any case since the composition of my Piano Concerto, Echo de narcisse (1995), are all quite clearly connected by the same concern for formal clarity and profound harmonic research. If you listen to the overture to La Petite danseuse, you will be able to hear this new harmonic colour that is mine today.

It seems to me that, from Rameau to Ravel, there exists a harmonic thinking that is typically French and to which I adhere unreservedly. Moreover, when Anglo-Saxons ask me ‘what kind of music’ I make, I invariably answer ‘a new French music’ , which doesn’t sound as good in French, but it is indeed this idea that I am striving to defend. This colour is also quite perceptible in my current piano solo. I’ve always known it, almost instinctively, as long as I’ve improvised in public. I wrote it quite precisely in my latest work, a modern melodrama for piano and Sprechgesang drawn from Maurice Rocher’s text Un petit rien-du-tout.

I’ve always alternated piano playing and symphonic writing. This is my way of staying alive, far away from coteries and close to the kinds of music I like (including jazz, obviously, which I’ve been playing professionally for more than 15 years), while going deeper into my orchestral thinking.

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They wrote (about the works, the style...)

About the works of Levaillant, the musicologist Bernard BOLLAND wrote:

Pianist, improviser and composer, Denis Levaillant (born in 1952) is doubtless one of today’s most original musicians.

His catalogue, which includes an opera and works for piano, voice, orchestra or chamber ensemble, also makes room for film music and ‘musical shows’ in different forms. The abundance and variety of this output, and writing that often borrows from jazz and folk music, must not however mask the profound unity of a creative approach that Denis Levaillant defines as follows: ‘I am fiercely opposed to formalism and the “modernism” attached to it, which paradoxically, most often produce formless works, i.e., devoid of sense. I am endeavouring to revive expression. I am interested in musical dramaturgy above all.’

About Echo de Narcisse (1995/1996 ), Piano Concerto, the same Bernard BOLLAND wrote:

" As a whole, Echo de Narcisse is striking in the simplicity of conception and the clarity of the piano and orchestral writing. In three movements (fast - slow - fast), it is faithful to the structure of the "classical" concerto forged by Mozart and Beethoven. The first movement is in sonata form, the second in lied form (A, B, A) and the finale a scherzo. The respect of "tradition" should in no way be understood as a more or less distanced divertissement on forms from the past (in the neo-classical style) but as a way of integrating the composer's personal language into large, living, universal forms. formes larges, vivantes et universelles. » Bernard BOLLAND

About the String Quartet n°2,Le Clair, l'obscur, the musicologist Pierre Michel wrote:

"As he says himself, Denis Levaillant seeks to return to the tradition of expression, and this quartet is particularly striking due to the emotion it conveys on three registers (first movement: Meditative; second movement: Dramatic; third movement: Tragic), running through twenty-four keys successively. This reference to old types of writing is not new in Denis Levaillant's music, and the listener will be able to draw a relation between the tenuto D minor chord shortly after the beginning of the third movement and this same sonority at the beginning of Tombeau de Gesualdo of 1994. Moreover, Le clair, l'obscur..., almost romantic at times, joins the poetry and immateriality of the most beautiful musical tombeaux of our era. Its homogeneous style nonetheless relies on varied means, with a particular tendency towards a lively rhythmic language whose models would be the speech and certain kinds of music of oral tradition."

About Attractions, Saxophones Quartet (1996)

Pierre Michel wrote:

" From his taste for jazz, his professional activity in this area and his leanings that, in general, are far from being academic, the composer has considered this genre, which is in the process of being emancipated (since Pousseur, Xenakis, Donatoni and Hugues Dufourt), with an openness towards mixed forms of expression, be they imbued with the spirit of modern jazz (at moments, one might think of the saxophone quartet of Jean-Louis Chautemps and François Janneau or of the "World Saxophone Quartet"), or close to a more western (modern) conception of writing. Moreover, did Denis Levaillant not declare that jazz was "one of the best schools of chamber music" that he knew?..."

About Sept Prières pour un canard sauvage, Winds quintet n°1

Pierre Michel wrote:

"Denis Levaillant assigns the wind quintet a veritable palette of sonorities by occasionally using several instruments of the same family (bass flute and flute in G, clarinet and bass clarinet, oboe, oboe d'amore and English horn) and by diversifying the musical situations. "In Drawn-out Time"(first prayer) or "Like an Organ" (third prayer) are a few of the notions expressed in the score, but the entire work reveals significant modifications in the expressive treatment of the musical material. This somewhat serene music strikes the listener with the wealth and proportioning of the means brought into play, including the micro-intervals in the third prayer that may remind one of spectral music. Symbol of a desire not to completely cut the links with the past, the seventh prayer (entitled The Forest Takes its Revenge in the stage production) evokes a consonant ending in A flat major, the third of the chord being provided by the flute's aeolian sounds...

The work was premiered by the Nielsen Quintet in March 1995, in its original version."

About the opera O.P.A.Mia

the composer and musicologist Gérard Condé wrote (excerpt):

« By choosing "long" voices (with a tessitura spanning two octaves), of lyric soprano and bass-baritone, the composer was straightaway committing himself to take them through all the registers. To these singing characters - Sunny Cash, the god of money, and Sphinx, the goddess of truth - correspond two speaking figures, two humans: a golden boy and a television announcer (who are not their doubles but rather their imperfect incarnation), whose dialogues (or monologues) take the place of recitatives in Baroque opera. Speech (like the recitative) has the advantage of being more directly understandable and allowing for a faster delivery; on the other hand, its relative prosaicness, in an operatic context, seems to destine it to the expression of less lofty passions. To make the most of the qualities of speech without being imprisoned by its limited lyricism was Denis Levaillant's concern when he chose to treat most of the spoken dialogues in music. That is the principle of melodrama, as was defined and experimented with by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and, especially, Georg Benda (1722-1795), whose works so impressed Mozart that he took inspiration from them for Zaide. To what degree the musical background, more or less neutral or active, underlines the words that are superposed on it, or contradicts them implicitly, is what the composer determines with more effectiveness than in the recitative.

It is generally the orchestra that weaves the backdrop in melodramas; here, it is sometimes the singing chorus or the speaking chorus, but sometimes also silence, which fully plays its musical role. It goes without saying that, each time, the procedure is implemented in a somewhat different fashion, according to the principle of continuous variation, which governs the entire work. A Latin verse, two duets between Sunny and He, then between Sphinx and She, closely combine singing and speech. In a few passages, the rhythm of the declamation is written down quite precisely, so that either the conductor must pay close attention to the spoken delivery, or the actor must articulate his text as in Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale."

About the piano pieces, the composer and musicologist Alain Féron wrote(excerpt):

"The crucial element to be mentioned here, though, is the sharing power of his music, as well as its breath, its poetry and fluidity, its fundamental honesty, or something else that defines it with an even greater degree of accuracy: its veracity, in other words, the soundness of its emotions, which some people have, inappropriately, called "beauty" and which, to me, seems to simply come from an exceptional sense of ethics.

Traveling through Denis Levaillant's musical cosmogony is like experiencing love and transcendence. Indeed, if his music means so much to us, it is because, as an expression of the composer's rich inner world, it is primarily telling us something about our inner self. Giving out with unrestrained generosity, the composer offers his music with absolute simplicity. That might be why it always seems accessible. But let's make no mistake about it: Levaillant's extraordinary talent is about hiding art behind art itself!