Chauvineau, Bertrand

Bertrand Chauvineau

Honorable mentions to the ICC “The contemporary piano 2018” for his works for solo piano
“Hommage à Grey Owl – ΙΙ. La lune projette des ombres fantastiques …”
& “Hommage à Grey Owl – IV. les ombres si longtemps endormies dans le rêve et dans l’ attente”

In parallel of my training as a scientific researcher, I was trained as a pianist at the Ecole Nationale de Musique de Cachan, where I got the Excellence prize in 1987, and at the Institut Musical Européen de Besançon, where I completed the professional cycle in 1991. During these years, I mainly worked with Ani and Raffi Petrossian, Michael Desjardins and Louis-Noël Belaubre, and also attended Master Classes with Deniz Gelembe and Theodore Paraskivesco. More recently I attended Master Classes with Jean-Claude Pennetier and, more regularly, with Françoise Chaffiaud.

As a pianist, I performed about fifty times in France and Japan, in a repertory that mainly favoured Mozart, Schumann, Scriabine, the French composers (Debussy, Faure), and the Finish composer Madetoja. In the late 2000s, a drastic change occured in my musical activities, getting more and more involved in composition. I completely switched to this way in 2013, encouraged by different musicians, like Jean-Claude Pennetier, Françoise Chaffiaud, and Ginette Gaubert. As a composer, I was ranked in 2016 2cd among about 40 composers at the 25th IBLA Musical International Competition, and got the 3rd prize of the 6th Fidelio International Composers competition among 184 composers.

bertrandchauvineau.com

On “Hommage à Grey Owl”

The two pieces I am pleased to submit to the “Contemporary Piano 2018” are two excerpts of “Hommage à Grey Owl : Impressions autour d’Ajawaan” (approximately, in english: “Tribute to Grey Owl: feelings in Ajawaan’s setting”). This is a musical suite I completed two years ago. While this is a suite made of four pieces, each piece makes sense separately from one another.

The very inspiration of these pieces is the life of Grey Owl, a man who lived very closely to the nature and its inhabitants. He lived in a retired canadian log cabin, bordering the Ajawaan lake, a cabin he shared with a couple of beavers. His life was a genuine tribute to tolerance, ecology lifestyle, and an hymn to the silent in the woods, and to the thousands of rustling that fill up this untamed world. I discovered this life long ago, from a book I was o¤ered when I was young. A book I read several time, and still very recently. This book corresponds to a french translation (by S. Ratel), of the last part of Grey Owl’s book “Tales of an Empty Cabin”. From the epilog, I found so much upseting, I took four sentences (in their french form) who inspired me the four pieces of the musical suite.

The four pieces, named after these four sentences, are (in french, and in parentheses their english origin):

• I – “… ces mille petits bruits dont est fait le silence” (“… soft whisperings and almost noiseless noises encompass me about.”)
• II – “La lune projette des ombres fantastiques …” (“And the moon throws eerie shadows …”)
• III – “… le silence lui-même était peuplé de voix …” (“… the grove was no more silent, but was …lled with all the voices …”)
• IV – “… les ombres si longtemps endormies dans le rêve et dans l’attente.” (“… awakens those others, who have dreamed and waited there so long.”)

The two pieces I submit for the competition are the pieces II and IV.