Souvenirs de la Belle Epoque
Compositions, paraphrases and arrangements by Laurent Grynszpan
“Don’t change a single note of this piece”, my piano teacher cautioned at each lesson. At last, for this recording, I can do exactly the opposite, purely for pleasure, certainly, and also out of a deliberately blatant desire to infringe upon works for piano.
My approach has been that of a laboratory technician in search of new experiments. Using older works as the starting point, one creates something new by abolishing barriers of time and borders that separate musicians. The France of Debussy and Waldteufel, the Spain of Granados, Nazareth’s Brazil and Scriabine’s Russia, Joplin’s and Gottschalk’s America become a single unique country when they flow through the filter of the musical imagination.
In these pieces and in my Suite pour le cinema muet (silent movie), I have forgotten the piano and its hammers to rediscover nostalgic bits, scraps of memory and images springing from a world belonging to a disturbed and phantom past that haunts my memory perpetually.
Writing for piano four-hands also means getting closer to my wife, and I've not hesitated to use all the means at my disposal to ensure that each of us does not remain in a separate corner …
Laurent Grynszpan
Listen:
- The Banjo - Gottschalk/Grynszpan (excerpt)
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O, Ma Charmante - Gottschalk/Grynszpan
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Ynes - Gottschalk/Grynszpan
- Passepied Pour Quatre Mains - Debussy/Grynszpan (excerpt)
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Autour d’Andaluza - Granados/Grynszpan
- Tango Odeon - Nazareth/Grynszpan (excerpt)
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Fin de 2 siècles pour 2 mains gauches - Scriabine/Grynszpan
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Amour Et Printemps - Waldteufel/Grynszpan
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Ragtime Dance - Joplin/Grynszpan