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Details
Mathilde, Marieke, et Madeleine: Fantasy for piano based on songs by Jacques Brel and Gerard Jouannest / Full score / Difficulty: Very advanced / Duration: 13 mins / Pages: 21 / Copyright: 2010 / Work number: 051.1 / Variant appears on the album When Words Fade / Spotify / Apple Music
Inspired by three chanson—Mathilde, Marieke, and Madeleine—this large-scale solo piano fantasy transforms the volatile emotional world of Jacques Brel into a virtuosic concert work filled with cabaret swagger, longing, delirium, and nostalgia. Rather than simply arranging Brel’s songs, the fantasy draws equally from the physical intensity of his performances — gasping breaths, sudden outbursts, mounting desperation, and raw theatrical abandon.
Fantasy-like transformations and original interludes propel the music through a constantly shifting pianistic landscape inspired by French chanson tradition, Lisztian virtuosity, wandering Flemish and Iberian colors, jazz harmonies, and the chaotic energy of music-hall pianism. At moments glittering and seductive, at others unhinged and brutal, the work embraces both the beauty and the messiness of romantic obsession.
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
Variants Available
by Greg Anderson, based on music by Jacques Brel
very advanced
