Karol Beffa

The pieces in this collection, recorded in September 2020 at the Sextan studios, are Karol Beffa's fourth album of improvisations.

Le Souffle des légendes, ensemble Saxo Voce with Charles Berling (reciter), Frank Bradley (piano), Jean-Yves Fourmeau (alto saxophone), Karol Beffa (piano), under the direction of Johan Farjot, works by Karol Beffa, Francis Poulenc, André Caplet, Henri Tomasi.

« Talisman » : un florilège de la musique de chambre et de la musique symphonique de Karol Beffa, Victoires de la musique classique 2013 et 2018. On y trouve aussi bien une direction contemplative (le clouds) que sur-vitaminée (le clocks), le tout servi par les plus grands interprètes.

Karol Beffa was awarded first at the Ecole Normale Supérieure but also received first at the Music Aggregation. He is now leading a double career. On the one hand, he graduated from ENSAE as an engineer statistician and in 2003 obtained a doctorate in musicology from EHESS by supporting a doctoral thesis on György Ligeti's Piano Studies. In November 2015, he supports a habilitation to direct research. He teaches at the University of Paris IV, then at the École Polytechnique and is a lecturer at ENS.

Recorded live in concert, Libres is the result of Karol Beffa's and Raphael Imbert's mutual passion for freedom, both musical and intellectual. Pianist Beffa is one of the most gifted classical composers of his generation, a lecturer at the Ecole Normale Superieure and winner of a Victoires de la Musique award in 2013. His works have been performed all over the world. Imbert is a self-taught jazz saxophonist, a talented improviser and researcher into music well beyond the sphere of jazz. On Libres, Imbert and Beffa become a single-minded duo where improvisation is a way of life, curiosity a philosophy and interaction an absolute necessity.

Composer Karol Buffa (b. 1973) began his career early, entering into the Conservatoire de Paris at the age of only 14. While at the Conservatoire he won eight first prize awards, in harmony, fugue, counterpoint, 20th century music, orchestration, accompaniment, analysis, and improvisation. Karol Beffa signs a monograph focusing on wind instruments. Of breath, certainly, the Concerto for trumpet and strings do not lack. It is one of the most beautiful songs of the soul of today Blow up, for quartet of wood and piano, assumes a playful aspect, and conjugates references to the repetitive musics and allusions To the current music, in the wake of certain pieces by Guillaume Connesson, Pascal Zavaro or Régis Campo. Powerful sonorous scents, great rhythmic progressions, evoking the music of Thierry Escaich, determine the writing of Subway for piano and trumpet, which is an adaptation of Manhattan for viola and piano. In between shadow and light, Blow up is probably the most faithful opus of the composer's contrasting style. It is served by great French interpreters.

First performed in its entirety by Tristan Pfaff in July 2014 as part of the “Festival des Forêts”, the whole of these twelve etudes, composed between 2000 to 2011, constitutes the bulk of Karol Beffa's works for solo piano. Polyphony, sense of colour, virtuosity, rhythmic swaying: these etudes truly test the performer. This is where Tristan Pfaff excels…

Media Vita, the title of this album, takes up that of the piece for mixed choir that I wrote in 2010 at the request of the dancer and choreographer Julien Lestel for his ballet Body and Souls.