Michael Jarrell

...mais les images restent...

...mais les images restent... is taken from the piano concerto Abschied, premiered at the Salzbourg festival in August 2001. This concerto is strongly associated with the memory and history of my father who passed away while the work was being composed. I think of my father regularly. And what remains, in the end are the images. His face. It is less the things said, the words, less the situations, the moments, than the images... Thus, the idea of using this title. To return to the solo part of a concerto, is also to restore a sort of intimacy, to shed a new light on it. The 'image', this piano sound (the leading role) perpetuating itself until the piece dies away, even above the rustle of the orchestra, is somewhat repeated. The idea consists above all, of moving closer to the soloist, like focussing on a pictorial work, to better perceive the details. In the concerto, it is already more a question of positioning the piano in front of the great orchestral 'fresco' than of radical opposition between the pianist and the orchestra. Thus the work of composition consisted essentially of reworking the orchestral interventions into the piano part, of finding a new balance between the subject and the background. The fact of having already composed the concerto made my task easier. In fact, I have great difficulty writing for the piano. In this case, I would say that the writing 'shock' had already taken place. But, choosing to do so, was also out of friendship for Marino Formenti to whom, for different reasons, I have long felt indebted.Michael Jarrell