33

Description

After his first album Héritage, Simon Ghraichy returns with 33. For this second recording, the pianist chose to open up to his audience by revealing part of his past, his anxieties, his madness, and his fascination with time. It is thanks to Schumann's Humoreske that Simon was able to free himself from some of his torments. In this rarely recorded work, the composer inserted between two staves a few measures that only the pianist can read and hear - called the inner voice. The rest of the program was shaped around this piece where Simon defines his own inner voice. The pianist begins with Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Francisco Tarrega, bridging his two albums. The following pieces by Charles-Valentin Alkan and Ariel Ramiez evoke Simon's former phobia of water linked to a trauma from his childhood. Following Schumann's Humoreske, composer/pianist Chilly Gonzales was inspired by this famous inner voice to compose a piece that references both the German composer and his own universe, during an unusual and original duo. The second part of the album is completed with Philip Glass and Michael Nyman, two minimalist composers dear to Simon where the notion of Time becomes frantic. The same goes for the works of Pawel Szymanski and Jacopo Baboni Schilingi.