Parallel worlds

"We believe that the marriage of the arts is a fundamental act in the educational process, as in any artistic process. For this reason, we have come up with the idea of proposing to the major composers of our century, Hugues Dufourt, Georg Friedrich Haas, Cristobal Halffter, György Kurtàg, Mauro Lanza, Philippe Manoury, Bruno Mantovani, Gérard Pesson and Wolfgang Rihm, to be inspired by an oeuvre of their choice at the Musée du Louvre..., pour créer une pièce destinée à des pianistes en cours de cursus musical." This is how Anne-Lise Gastaldi and Valérie Haluk described their project, which was published by Universal Edition in 2014 under the title univers parallèles.

This idea might make you think spontaneously of Mussorgsky's famous Pictures of an exhibition. Logically, however, this could not be a stylistically uniform cycle. And the mostly moderate pianistic demands, which most of the composers adhered to as commissioned, do not follow in the footsteps of the Russian model.

Rather, the result is a colorful collection of short pieces that occasionally reveal more about the composer (not a single female composer!) than about the chosen work of art from the Louvre.

There is the Astronomers after Vermeera distinctive sound painting by Philippe Manoury; Rembrandt's oxen, suddenly in the Louvre by Wolfgang Rihm, told with the simplest of means and humor, or the motoric, gimmicky autoportrait by Bruno Mantovani. In contrast, Kurtág's very profound ...couple égyptien en route vers l'inconnu... inspired by a work of art that was created around 2350-2200 BC, which the composer dedicated to the 90-year-old exceptional pianist Menahem Pressler, perhaps not without a hint of irony.

None of the composers wisely adhered to the Mona Lisa I wonder what it would sound like?

Dufourt, Haas, Halffter, Kurtàg, Lanza, Manoury, Mantovani, Pesson, Rihm: univers parallèles. Dix nouvelles pièces pour piano inspirées de chefs-d'ouvres du Louvre, UE 36 021, € 24.95, Universal Edition, Vienna