Toucher 

Commissioned by Création Mondiale France Musique, Radio France

Year Composed     2017/2018

Instrumentation       Piano solo
Duration                 10’
Publisher                Universal Edition, UESD101166-410

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First performed November 2018, by Jean-Marie Cottet

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Programme note

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toucher \tu.ʃe\ 

 

The typical aggregates in this work will be played by a quick gesture on the keyboard. A musical gesture between anxiety and enthusiasm at the moment of discovering the unknown, leaving the trail of the resonance as the perfume on the skin. These aggregates formed between the white and black keys intermingle gradually in a single body. 

 

Paradoxically this piece called Touch includes the untouchable area blocked by the 3th pedal on the keyboard. It is an inaccessible area for the entire duration of the piece. But this area is, indeed, not mute. It creates ghostly resonance with played notes and this resonance joins infiﾞnity and dissolves in memories. Its resonances intertwine and flﾟy through space, creating the sensation of a suspension of time. In the virtuoso passages with the indication «Leggiero & Glamours», I imagined that all these resonances diffract. During the work, the inaccessible zone opens little by little, as if an emotional shock where a change of consciousness had pushed the limit. 

It is an extremely fragile, capricious world that can evaporate at any time and fall into a world without dreams. 

It is all these fragilities and ambiguities that interested me.