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Details
Mathilde, Marieke, et Madeleine: Fantasy for two pianos based on songs by Jacques Brel and Gerard Jouannest / Full score / Difficulty: Very advanced / Duration: 13 mins / Pages: 23 / Copyright: 2010 / Work number: 051.2 / Appears on the album When Words Fade / Spotify / Apple Music
This expanded two-piano version of Greg Anderson's Mathilde, Marieke, et Madeleine transforms three iconic chansons of Jacques Brel into a large-scale virtuoso fantasy for piano duo, bringing the swagger, longing, delirium, and nostalgia of Brel's cabaret world to the concert stage.
Rather than simply arranging his songs, the fantasy expands upon them with elaboarate new textures and original connecting material, while drawing equally from the physical intensity of Brel's performances themselves: gasping breaths, sudden outbursts, mounting desperation, and raw theatrical abandon.
Blending French chanson with Lisztian bravura, jazz-inflected harmonies, Flemish and Iberian colors, and cabaret-style pianism pushed toward chaos, the fantasy demands exceptional ensemble precision, coloristic imagination, and theatrical instinct.
Program Notes
Ah, the throes of unrequited love! Madeleine’s games of hot-and-cold lead to drunken fits of frustration, the irrevocable loss of Marieke elicits nostalgic dreams of longing, and no-show Madeleine prompts late-night delusions of grandeur (in the rain, no less) … the usual blunders and delicious wonders of romance! But what remains when the words fade? Fiercely undiluted emotions, Brel’s gasps for air, airborne bullets of perspiration, and the reverb of his wails on the cabaret walls.
— Greg Anderson & Elizabeth Joy Roe
Variant
by Greg Anderson, based on music by Jacques Brel
very advanced
