ORCHESTRA WORKS

pour orchestre • [2007]
für großes Orchester
3. 2. 4. 2. / 4. 3. 2. 1. / Hf. Org. Pk. 3 Schlzg. / 12. 10. 8. 6. 4 .
Material auf Anfrage
Uraufführung: 16.5.2008, Berlin
Dauer: 14’ (erste Fassung, Verlängerung des Stückes geplant)
Sy. 3824 // Partitur / Sti.

Tre Volti del Volubile Ares • [2006]
für Bläser und Schlagzeug
Fassung für 27 Musiker
I. Inno; II. Il sole è cieco (secondo Curzio Malaparte): violento; III. Il sole è cieco: funebre
2. 2. 5. 2. / 4 Sax./ 2. 2. 3. .1/ 4 Schlzg.
Uraufführung: 22.5.2011, Sao Paolo (BRA)
Dauer: 23’
Sy. 3980 // Partitur / Sti.

Tre Volti del Volubile Ares • [2006]
für Bläser und Schlagzeug
Fassung für 49 Musiker
I. Inno; II. Il sole è cieco (secondo Curzio Malaparte): violento; III. Il sole è cieco: funebre
1 Picc., 2.  2., 1 Eh., 2 Fg (od. 2 Barsax. ad lib.] / 1 Picckl. 3x4 Kl (in B). 2 Altkl (in Es)(od. 2 Bkl. ad lib). 2 Bkl. Kbkl. /Ssax. Asax. Tsax. Barsax. / 4. 2 Kornett (in B). 2. 3. 2 Tentb. 2 Btb. / 4 Schlzg.
Dauer: 23’
Sy. 3981 // Partitur / Sti.

ENSEMBLE WORKS

à tue-tête • [2014]
für neun im Raum verteilte WindInstrumente
1 Ob., 2 Klar., 1 Sax., 2 Hrn., 1 Tp., 2 Psn.
Uraufführung: 09.08.2014, Darmstadt
Sy. 4280

Après tout • [2011-12]
für sechs Solostimmen, sechs Instrumente und Live-Elektronik
I. Nous étions si semblables; II. Ressentir, inépuisablement; III. Le grand théâtre du pardon
Libretto von Elisa Primavera-Lévy, nach Texten von Vladimir Jankélevitch, Wiard Raveling, Albert Camus, Jean Améry, Friedrich Nietzsche
S. lyr S. Ms. T. Bar. B.
Fl (Picc. Bfl). Sax (Ssax. Asax. Barsax). Schlzg. Akk. E-Git. Vc. / Sam. / elektr. verst.
Uraufführung: 21.1.2013, Berlin
Dauer: 45’
Sy. 4059 // Partitur / Sti.

Querwüchsig • [2006/09/11]  
für dreizehn Instrumentalisten
1 (Bfl). 1. 1 (Bkl). 1. / 0. 1. 1 (Tbps) 0. / Hf. Klav. 2 Schlzg. / 1. 0. 1. 1. 0.
Uraufführung: 22.3.2007, Dijon
Dauer: 15’
Sy. 3833 // Partitur / Sti.

CHAMBER MUSIC

Nun hab' ich nichts mehr • [2016] 
für Sopran und Quintett
S. Kl. E-git. Klav. Akk.
Uraufführung: Parma, 2016
Sy. 4488

Danse Polyptote • [2015] 
Fassung für Saxophon und Akkordeon
Sax. Akk.
Uraufführung: Paris, 2016
Sy. 4430

Danse Polyptote • [2014]
Fassung für Klarinette und Akkordeon
Kl. Akk.
Uraufführung: Berlin, 24.03.2015
Sy. 4397

À propos • [2008]
für fünf Instrumentalisten
1. Les automates intimes de Tim Hawkinson; 2. Quand Jeff Wall regarde Hokusai; 3. Rouge Burri; 4. Rajeunir, par Penone
Fl. Kl. Klav (präp). Vl. Vc.
Uraufführung: 19.9.2009, Luzern
Dauer: 21’
Sy. 3922 // *Partitur / *Sti.

Towards the Door We Never Opened • [2012]
für Saxophonquartett
4 Sax.
Uraufführung: 27.4.2013, Witten
Dauer: 11’
Sy. 4226 // Partitur / Sti.

Danse Polyptote • [2011]
für Violoncello und Akkordeon
Vc. Akk.
Uraufführung: 7.2.2013, Stuttgart
Dauer: 9’
Sy. 4224 // Partitur

à peu près de • [2009/10]
Duo für Trompete in C und Trompete in B
2 Tr.
Uraufführung: 23.4.2010, Berlin
Dauer: 13’
Sy. 3924 // *Partitur

Sonneries de Cantenac • [2008]
für vier im Raum verteilte Blasinstrumente im selben Register
4 Bl.
Uraufführung: 9.12.2008, St. Emilion
Dauer: variabel
Sy. 3798 // *Sti.

Dr. B. • [1996/2001]
für Bariton und Fagott
Text: nach Stefan Zweigs „Schachnovelle“
Bar. Fg.
Uraufführung: 28.09.1996, Royaumont
Dauer: 16’
Sy. 3843 // *Partitur

VOCAL MUSIC

Als Gregor und Griselda (German Version) / Quand Friselda et son voisin (French Version) • [2015]
für sechs Stimmen
6voc.
Uraufführung: 29.08.2015, Liestal, CH
Sy. 4429

SOLO WORKS

Lexèmes hirsutes • [2007/...]
für Violoncello
Vc.
Die bisher existierenden Teile „Lexemes“ und „Anaphores“ (eines geplanten Zyklus‘) können auch einzeln aufgeführt werden.
Uraufführung: 3.3.2007 (I.), Paris
Dauer: 10’ (4’+6’)
Sy. 3832 // Partitur

Fabien Lévy – A Portrait

In our current globalized world, with music effortlessly available from almost every country, the most compelling musical identities transcend national borders. Fabien Lévy represents a model of today’s international composer both in his life and his compositional œuvre. Born in Paris in 1968, he has lived in France, England, Italy, Germany, and the United States and has been engaged in the different local music scenes. His delicate music unites influences ranging from spectralism, musique concrète instrumentale, and minimalism to the poly- rhythmic music of Central Africa and Gagaku of Japan.

Lévy first studied mathematics and economics before finding mentors in Gérard Grisey as well as Jean-Claude Risset and Hugues Dufourt. His œuvre, comprising works for orchestra, vocal and instrumental ensemble, solo instruments, and electronics shows post-spectral traits in several ways: it features the composer’s fascination for sound as a sensual experience with all its complexity, ambiguity, and finally ineffability.

Lévy is a master of surprise, establishing listening expectations only to subvert them and shift the listener’s attention into another direction. The ear, Lévy seems to suggest, is as susceptible to illusion as the other senses. He was led to this attitude not only by research on perception by Risset but also by his experience with non-Western music. Lévy passionately explores the diversity of musical cultures of the world. While studying ethnomusicology—in addition to composition, music analysis, harmony, and orchestration at the Conservatoire National Supérieur in Paris—he investigated pygmy music in Cameroon. This engagement taught him that listening is culturally conditioned and hence relative, an awareness that constantly flows through his own music.

Extra-musical inspirations and stimuli play a crucial role for Lévy, and he does not hesitate to share them with the listener, as in À propos (2008) written for the German ensemble recherche. Each of the four movements is dedicated to a visual artist: Jeff Wall, Giuseppe Penone, Alberto Burri, and Tim Hawkinson. Together they form Lévy’s “little imaginary museum,” as he puts it. The piece also shows his interest in musical form, representing, for Lévy, the influence of the German tradition on his musical thinking. In 2001 he first went to Berlin and remained there until he became Professor of Composition at Columbia University in New York in 2006. Six years later he moved back to Berlin as Senior Professor of Composition in Detmold, a historic town with a well renown conservatory.

As in many other works like durch (1998) and towards the door we never opened (2013), both for saxophone quartet, rhythm is a dominant feature of À propos. The steady regular pulse and the concern with meter grant Lévy’s music the character of flow, of always moving forward. One might hear this as an influence of first generation minimal music, or as a shadow of Lévy’s earlier engagement with jazz. He delights in building complex poly-rhythmical structures and uses a variety of techniques and mathematic models, like cross rhythms and rhythmic canons. Thanks to this strong, rhythmic dimension his music is highly accessible to a broad variety of listeners.

With Après tout (2012) for vocal and instrumental ensemble and live electronics, Lévy composed a 50-minute musical meditation on the possibilities of forgiving. It was inspired by a debate between the philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch and a German high school teacher, Wiard Raveling, about whether it would ever be possible to forgive after the Third Reich. The topic touches upon the coordinates of Lévy’s own life as a secular French composer with Jewish roots who lives in Berlin. At the end of his “grand theater of forgiveness,” he refuses a moral judgment but leaves it open to the audience to decide whether forgiving is possible—a powerful statement with a strong impact on the listener as the first performances in Berlin and Stuttgart showed. The experience was equally moving for the audience and for the com- poser himself, as the fine and subtle music succeeded to reach and deeply affect many listeners who had never been in touch with con- temporary music before.

One of Lévy’s favorite lessons from Grisey is that composing is not about producing but about creating. This summarizes his own musical credo. In a musical world that prioritizes premieres and always demands more new pieces, Lévy allows himself to focus on writing very few pieces per year and to develop a new approach for each one of them. As a result, none follows the same strategy or method as any others. In Pour Orchestre, written for the orchestra of Komische Oper Berlin, he deconstructs the traditional symphony orchestra as a mirror of the Western world with its implied hierarchies and mechanisms of power. This begins with a “geography of the ensemble” when the harp and woodwind sections take the place of the strings, which must instead move to the background. It continues with the musicians enacting the utopian ideal of a different society, in which 67 individuals interact as equals in a polyrhythmic structure.

On both sides of the Atlantic, Fabien Lévy’s music stands out for its rhythmical delicacy and deep sonic sensitivity, multi-dimensionality and perceptual richness. No matter how intellectually charged and philosophically reflected the music is it remains playful and joyous, inviting the listener to follow Lévy through his musical world.

by Lydia Rilling