Le Balcon

Michaël Levinas
Concerto pour un piano espace n° 2 (1980) for piano, ensemble and electronics

"This is an acoustic study of the space of a piano. The small orchestra must be amplified and reverberated as if it were playing inside the “cave”, the piano's soundboard. Thanks to the resonance effect of the pedal, the piano incorporates the natural reverberation of the liturgical spaces of 17th- and 18th-century music into the components of its timbre. This timbre is close to the brilliance of the voice, but also includes an element of noise and percussion. Perhaps this is the sound of water that Liszt perceived in the ‘caves’ of the Villa d'Este. A tape, interspersed with gasps that humanise and “instrumentalise” the flutist's trills, structures the concerto through obsessive repetition. Two large ascending tutti support the overall form of the work."

Michaël Levinas

First performance by Le Balcon on 25 February 2010 at the Église Saint-Merry, Paris.