Galerie Des Glaces / Improvisations

Description

The pieces gathered in this collection constitute the fourth CD of improvisations by Karol Beffa. Here too, it is the audience that proposed the themes to him.
In some cases, the musician drew from various eras to nourish his inspiration. In Angelus, a mystical dimension comes to insert itself into an intentionally archaic framework evoking Gregorian chant. Sarabande funèbre, Le Songe du Cantor, and Souvenir de Leipzig are nods to a slightly romanticized baroque. More openly romantic this time, Rosamunde flirts with Franckian harmonies, while Adagietto explicitly references Mahler through its layering and overlaps. As for Calamity Jane and Birdland, their rhythmic sways adorn them with distinctly jazzy colors.
With Las Meninas and Nights in the Gardens of Spain, it is a spatial and not temporal dislocation that the audience is summoned to, the improviser leading them into a Spain with imagined Moorish architectures.
Another series of pieces features characters: a playful Charlot, a disarticulated puppet; a Hurdy-Gurdy Player, a Schubertian reminiscence; a Tightrope Walker who oscillates on his musical string, torn between attraction and repulsion of the void.
Particular sound effects have sometimes been sought. In Fragments d’explosifs, there are explosions that tear through an anxious musical canvas woven with gasps and suffocations. Tinkling of bells punctuates Carillon nocturne and Clocher englouti. And the hypnotic power they create is found in the pulsed pedal play offered by Drops and Le Belvédère. As for Piano préparé (and its anagrammatic twin Opéra en papier), its title speaks for itself.
Finally, Kafka’s Nightmare and Escher’s Woodcuts imprison the audience in a geometric labyrinth of false perspectives and infinite staircases.
On very simple musical material, the piece that gives its title to the CD, Galerie des glaces, invites the listener to multiple games of reflection and refraction.