95129
TIERSEN ‘POUR AMÉLIE’ PIANO MUSIC
J E R O E N VA N V E E N
piano
Yann Tiersen (1970)
Yann Tiersen
Piano Music
Born in Brest in Brittany on June 23, 1970, Tiersen was raised in Rennes and made a name for himself as one of the star pupils at his local conservatory (despite middling academic grades). Tiersen studied violin and piano from the ages of six to 14, and eventually trained to be a conductor. However, Tiersen rebelled against his classical training and, inspired by the likes of Joy Division and the Stooges, played guitar with several local post-punk-influenced bands during his later teenage years. With his melancholy music Yann Tiersen has become a famous composer, not only for his soundtrack work, but also for his other compositions. Borrowing from French folk music, chanson, musette waltz, and street music, as well as rock, avant-garde, and classical and minimalist influences, Tiersen’s deceptively simple style has a classical base; it goes back to the music by Chopin, Erik Satie, Philip Glass, and Michael Nyman. The Paris-based composer became popular outside his native country for his score to Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s ‘Amélie’, but like most seemingly overnight successes, he had been working for years before the film’s success brought him international acclaim. At the same time, Tiersen was also composing soundtracks for short films and accompaniment for plays. Several of these pieces ended up on his first album, Valse des Monstres, in 1995 and introduced his delicate but deeply emotional style; they also featured intricate arrangements incorporating various instruments. In his subsequent composition his instrumentation was as varied as piano, electric piano, Fender Rhodes, organ, harpsichord, Bontempi and toy piano, Korg and Moog synthesizers, Mellotron, accordion and melodica, strings as violin, viola, violon and cello, different types of electric, acoustic and bass guitars, mandolin, banjo, ukulele, bouzouki and oud, brasses, like horns, and woodwind instruments such as saxophone, clarinet, bassoon, pipe, oboe and flute, percussions like drums, vibraphone, marimba, tubular bells, tom, cymbal, glockenspiel and tam-tam, and also the sounds produced by Leslie speaker, music box, carillons, typewriters, cooking vessels, chairs, a car or a bicycle wheel. Tiersen played all of these instruments both in the studio and in concert, which gave his early one-man shows a theatrical appeal
CD1 ‘Pour Amélie’ 01 Comptine d`un autre été: l`après midi 02 Comptine d`été No.2 03 Comptine d`été No.3 04 Le vieux en veut encore 05 Toujours la 06 Comptine d`été No.1 07 La piece vide 08 La dispute 09 Sur le fil 10 Les jours heureux 11 La chute 12 L`absente 13 Le retour 14 La valse d`Amélie 15 Le Moulin 16 Le matin 17 La plage 18 Les retrouvailles 19 La jetee 20 Tabarly 21 8 mmm 22 Point Zero
2
58’34
2’24 2’42 2’32 1’40 1’24 2’22 1’54 2’16 5’15 2’20 6’03 3’19 1’52 2’43 3’40 2’07 2’13 2’21 1’02 2’46 2’25 3’02
CD2 52’42 Goodbye Lenin 01 Summer 78 3’59 02 Coma 1’58 03 Childhood (1) 1’54 04 From Prison to Hospital 1’23 05 Mother 1’43 06 Watching Lara 1’51 07 Selling Dishes 0’51 08 First Rendez-Vous 1’33 09 The Decant Session 0’53 10 Lara’s Castle 2’02 11 The Deutsch Mark is Coming 1’14 12 I saw Daddy today 2’20 13 Birthday Preparations 1’45 14 Good Bye Lenin 5’30 15 Childhood (2) 2’43 16 Letters 1’31 17 Mother’s Journey 1’33 18 Preparations for the Last TV Fake 3’12 19 Mother Will Die 3’29 20 Father is Late 1’41 21 Father and Mother 3’29 22 Finding the Money 1’31 23 Summer 78 4’24
Jeroen van Veen piano
3
and earned him a spot performing in 1996’s Avignon Festival. However, Valse des Monstres and its follow-up, 1996’s Rue des Cascades, were largely ignored by the public and by critics. It was only up to his third album that was a radio hit and gave a mainstream success in France. Tiersen has always composed his music alone and in solitude, starting from simple melodies to which he added subsequent layers, using the multi track way like Mike Oldfield made his famous Tubular Bells in 1973 by playing all the instruments one by one. As Tiersen’s acclaim grew, so did the scope of his records. That year’s Black Sessions — a live album of a radio performance — featured collaborations with Dominique A. and the Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon, as well bands like Les Têtes Raides and the Married Monk, who also appeared on 1999’s more rock-oriented album Tout Est Calme. Soon after, Tiersen was preparing his next album when he was contacted by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who wanted Tiersen to score his next movie, Amélie. Jeunet had heard Tiersen’s music while driving in the car and had been so taken with it that he bought all of Tiersen’s albums. Previously, the composer had contributed music to films such as Alice et Martin and La Vie Rêvée des Anges, but this was his most prominent film work yet. His Amélie score featured new and old compositions, and the film’s success spun off to Tiersen’s music; the soundtrack sold over 200,000 copies in his homeland, and became Platinum in the US and Germany. His next proper album, 2001’s Absente, featured collaborations with Lisa Germano, as well as longtime contributors Hannon and Dominique A., and also benefited from Amélie’s success, selling 100,000 copies in France. Throughout 2001 and 2002, Tiersen embarked on his most ambitious tours of France and the U.K. to date; this tour was chronicled in 2003’s live album C’Était Ici. Later that year, Tiersen’s score for Good Bye Lenin! arrived. Tiersen spent the rest of the 2000s alternating between film and pop music, issuing the score to Les Retrouvailles and the collaboration Yann Tiersen & Shannon Wright in 2005. He also toured frequently, releasing a live album in 2006 and the Tabarly score in 2008. With the Tabarly soundtrack Tiersen saw a return to minimalism and the most of the pieces are written for solo piano. Dust Lane, an album focusing on mortality, arrived in 2010. Tiersen began a world tour 4
in New York to support the album, and took a brief respite before jumping back into the studio. The single “Monuments” was released in July of 2011 as an enticement for his next full-length album, Skyline, which was released in Europe on October 17, 2011 and in the United States a week later. The touring cycle continued, Tiersen taking the album on the road for a year and a half before beginning recording once again. His eighth album, 8 (Infinity), was scheduled for a May 2014 release on Mute, and was preceded by the single “A Midsummer Evening,” a nugget of complex yet tuneful chamber pop that recalled the Polyphonic Spree. With his music Tiersen attracts a younger audience; not specific classical audience but his piano music gave many piano amateurs a great challenge to try to play his music. On cd number one you can hear a selection that was released in print as Piano Works, and on cd two you can find all the piano music from the soundtrack ‘Goodbye Lenin’. I first recorded some of the music by Yann Tierssen for my Minimal Piano Collection in 2005. The pieces that were in print at that time I included in the first ‘Minimal Collection. Volume I-IX’. On this release you can hear the same pieces, new recorded in my studio and completed with the newly released music for piano. Enjoy this journey which brings you a flavor of French nostalgic music, combined with hallucinative Minimalism. © Jeroen van Veen
5
Jeroen van Veen “Dutch pianist and composer, Jeroen van Veen, the leading exponent of minimalism today”, Alan Swanson (Fanfare) “Jeroen van Veen has for many years been a powerhouse in the piano world of the Netherlands and beyond”, Dominy Clements (Musicweb-International) “The Maximal Minimalist Missionary”, Raymond Tuttle (Fanfare) Jeroen Van Veen (1969) started playing the piano at the age of 7. He studied at the Utrecht Conservatory with Alwin Bär and Håkon Austbö. In 1993 he passed the Performing Artists’ Exam. Van Veen has played with orchestras conducted by Howard Williams (Adams), Peter Eötvös (Zimmermann), Neal Stulberg (Mozart & Bartok) and Robert Craft (Stravinsky). He has played recitals in Austria, Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Russia & the USA. Van Veen attended master classes with Claude Helffer, Roberto Szidon, Ivan Klánsky and Leonid Hambro. He was invited to several festivals; Reder Piano Festival (1988), Festival der Kunsten in Bad Gleichenberg (1992), Wien Modern (1993), Holland Dance Festival (1998) Lek Art Festival (19962007). Van Veen recorded for major Dutch Radio- and Television companies like AVRO, NOS, IKON, NCRV, TROS/Internet, WTBC-TV & Radio (Florida, U.S.A.) and Moscow Television. In 1992, Van Veen recorded his first CD as Piano duo Van Veen. In 1995 Piano duo Van Veen made their debut in the United States. They 6
were prizewinners in the prestigious 4th International Murray Dranoff Two Piano Competition in Miami, Florida. After this achievement they toured the United States and Canada many times. The documentary “Two Pianos One Passion” (nominated with an Emmy Award 1996) documents them as a duo. The various compositions by Van Veen may be described as ‘Minimal Music’ with different faces, Crossovers to Jazz, Blues, Soundscape, Avant-Garde, Techno, Trance and Pop Music. His Minimal Preludes for piano, and his NLXL are some of his most played pieces worldwide. Currently Mr. Van Veen is director of Van Veen Productions, Chairman of the Simeon ten Holt Foundation, Pianomania Foundation and artistic director of several music festivals in Amsterdam, Culemborg, Utrecht and Veldhoven. He is also active as Overseas Artistic Director in the Murray Dranoff Two Piano Competition based in Miami. Over the last 20 years Van Veen recorded more than 110 CD’s and 5 DVD’s for several labels (Mirasound, Koch, Naxos, Brilliant Classics) and his own label PIANO. The recording of Les Noces (Stravinsky) for Naxos was stated in the New York Times as “the best recording ever”. Van Veen is also praised for his productivity some say: ‘the man who records faster than his shadow’. www.jeroenvanveen.com www.vanveenproductions.com
Recording: 4 & 5 November 2014, Van Veen Productions, Studio 1, Culemborg Executive producer: Jeroen van Veen Producer: Van Veen productions Engineered & mastered by: Pianomania Software: Pro Tools, Logic & Sequoia Microphones: DPA 2006A Piano: Yamaha C7 Cover image: Shutterstock/PHOTOCREO Michal Bednarek Photo of Jeroen van Veen: © Janey van Ierland All works published by © Universal Music Publishing & Editions Bourges p & © 2015 Brilliant Classics
7