Lühl-Dolgorukiy Vol. VI

Ce disque est le sixième volume des CDs prévus pour l’intégrale des œuvres pour piano de Lühl. Il rassemble les premières œuvres (dans la suite chronologique directe des volumes précédents), écrites juste après la fin de sa formation au Conservatoire National de Paris. Lühl compose à la table et n’a pas besoin de support instrumental pour se retrouver dans son monde de sons et de rythmes. Cependant, pianiste, il ne peut résister de répéter certains passages pour commencer à les travailler au clavier. Après dix ans d’études d’harmonie et de contrepoint, son travail est abouti. Ainsi avait-il déjà pensé, enfant, à composer sans relâche pour apprendre, mais pour plus tard, une fois qu’il aurait acquis les outils nécessaires, "ne plus faire de fautes d’écriture et de structure ni d’étourderies de jeunesse", puis à remanier toutes ses oeuvres de jeunesse pour les raccorder avec les oeuvres dites "correctes". Ainsi, il réalisa son projet sur des années, revisitant pièces pour piano, musique de chambre et symphonies en les réécrivant entièrement et ne gardant que le thème principal de manière à constituer à travers son catalogue, une unité, une cohésion stylistique et musicale. Chaque future oeuvre s’inspire de la précédente, créant ainsi un fil conducteur. Son catalogue est considérable et regroupe déjà près de 230 opus (LWV = Lühl-Werke-Verzeichnis, "catalogue des œuvres de Lühl "), dont sept symphonies, trois concertos pour piano, diverses pièces pour soliste et orchestre, des poèmes symphoniques, de la musique de chambre... et pas moins de 170 pièces pour piano. Son opéra Unvergessen (Inoubliable) en trois actes sur un drame historique a été créé en janvier 2004 à Bolzano, capitale du Tyrol du Sud italien (10 représentations).
L’Association Vauban lui a commandé une série d’œuvres commémoratives pour célébrer l’année des 300 ans de la mort du Maréchal en 2007 : un Requiem In memoriam Vauban, le poème symphonique La Chamade sur l’ouvrage Traité d’attaque des places en douze temps, une symphonie de chambre pour orchestre à cordes, un quatuor à cordes, illustrant des lettres originales de Vauban, une Suite Royale pour corde ou flûte seule.
Lühl reste un compositeur foncièrement classique, suivant la tradition des contemporains de Brahms, Tchaïkovski, Rachmaninoff ou Scriabine. Fortement attaché à la symbolique, ses pièces libres portent souvent des titres énigmatiques et méditatifs. Lühl est un "international", se sentant, peut-être par ses origines familiales, artistiquement slave et germanique. Outre des transcriptions et des pièces individuelles, son catalogue pour piano seul comporte neuf sonates, onze ballades, une trentaine de moments musicaux, une trentaine de préludes, des valses, des études et des cycles d’œuvres. Pendant des années, il a préparé en tant que pianiste l’intégrale des oeuvres d'Alexandre Scriabine. Ensuite, c’est à Serge Rachmaninov qu’il dédie son engagement pianistique avec toute son énergie en cherchant des œuvres nouvelles et inédites. Lühl-Dolgorukiy est un artiste complet. Grand amateur d’Art Nouveau, de peinture impressionniste et d’architecture de la Renaissance italienne, il est également l’auteur de nombreuses œuvres littéraires en trois langues dans les thématiques les plus diverses (essais, romans à caractère historique, philosophique, futuriste ou dramatique, recueils de poésies, ouvrages scientifiques musicologiques, nouvelles...). Il travaille en collaboration avec les éditions phonographiques POLYMNIE pour l’intégrale de l’enregistrement de ses œuvres.

Elena Ossipova

4 Moments musicaux LWV 78
Les quatre pièces, toutes écrites entre le 6 et le 8 mars 2003, qui débutent cet album, font partie d’une série de pièces courtes de forme libre intitulées moments musicaux, que Lühl conservera tout au long de sa carrière de compositeur.

Un secret LWV 79
Siamois de la pièce précédente Un Sourire LWV 75, disponible dans le vol. 5 de ses pièces pour piano, cette pièce souligne le penchant de Lühl pour la mélodie accompagnée par un accompagnement complexe, mais toujours discret.

3 Préludes LWV 81
Originalement, ces trois pièces, composées en décembre 2003, furent écrites dans un ordre différent de la présentation dans cet album, mais Lühl décida de maintenir ce nouvel ordre pour créer un fil conducteur entre les différentes tonalités des pièces.

Ballade n°5 LWV 82
Parmi les onze ballades actuellement composées, la cinquième s’inspire fortement de la précédente dans la complexité de son écriture pianistique.

2 Préludes LWV 83
En 2003, devenu parrain d’une nouvelle création botanique d’un iris, qui fut présenté à Auvers-sur- Oise dans le cadre d’une conférence, Lühl composa une petite pièce méditative en hommage à cette fleur magnifique. La deuxième pièce en revanche, conclut le cycle avec force et détermination.

12 Préludes LWV 89
Ces douze pièces (juillet/août 2004) suivent l’ordre des douze tonalités majeures de notre système tempéré occidental. L’opus 89 à 91 marque la phase artistique la plus épanouie dans la vie du compositeur et il compose pratiquement une pièce par jour, soutenu par une inspiration et une originalité incroyables.

This recording is the sixth volume of at least thirteen CDs planned as Lühl’s complete works for piano solo. This is “a moment of great happiness in my life”, he says, although sought after by everybody, and he lacks time for himself and composing. Lühl composes while sitting at the table and does not need any instrumental support to find harmony, sounds and rhythms because he hears them in his head. However, as a pianist he cannot resist playing certain passages he has just written just for pure digital pleasure and satisfaction. He has never changed his way of working. Aged nine he wrote his first work which consisted of two virtuoso pages. Lühl doesn’t divulge in public his way of working; he often repeats himself at the end of a concert when the public asks him: “How do you do it?!” For him it’s the result of sounds and their architecture which matters, not the fact of writing an entire book about a very private journey of self-discovery which results in his music. “When I’m gone others can ask themselves these questions. It will at least give them something to talk about”, he smiles.
After ten years of studies in harmony and conterpoint his training was complete. Since childhood he always knew he would spend every moment composing once he acquired the necessary tools to do so. And so he completed his project over the years revisiting his piano pieces, chamber music and symphonies by rewriting them entirely and only preserving the main thematic elements, so as to create a unity in a stylistic and musical cohesion throughout his catalogue.
At the same time he continues to compose new pieces. Each future work is inspired by the previous one, creating in a way the thread that runs though time and space in his music. Each written piece is a witness, a page from a diary to be decoded by the listener. Lühl composes directly on paper without any drafts. His intellectual creation process is similar to Arnold Schönberg’s case: the music runs through his head while walking or giving classes, or even riding his bicycle...! And often in addition to the work, “inspiration comes while writing”. Once the sequence is clear in his head he only has to write it down. He works very quickly and his catalogue is quite large given his young age and already includes 230 opuses (LWV= Lühl-Werke-Verzeichnis, in English ‘Lühl’s composition catalogue’), which include eight symphonies, three piano concertos, various pieces for solo and orchestra, symphonic poems, chamber music, ... and at least 200 pieces for piano. His opera “Unvergessen” (“Unforgotten”) in three acts based on a historical drama was performed ten times in January 2004 in Bolzano, the Tyrolean capital of Northern Italy.
Several years ago, he started working with the “Vauban Association” to compose commemorative works on the great French Marshall de Vauban (1633-1707) for his tercentenary which was celebrated in 2007. He was in charge of the musical part and composed four great pieces: a string quartet, a Requiem in memoriam Vauban, a symphonic poem entitled la Chamade for choir and orchestra which illustrates Vauban’s essay on the attack and defence of fortified citadels, and a suite for solo string entitled suite royale (‘King suite’) honouring the memory of Louis XIV.
His pieces for piano are classed by cycle in accordance with his desire for unity throughout his work. He refuses “unusual” commissions (e.g. clarinet and flute, accordion and piano...), and by definition all that is not useful for his purposes. He writes at the moment of inspiration and for stylistic unity. Eventually, his ultimate goal is to leave to posterity a cultural patrimony of quality as well as an entity which has witnessed his artistic processes during these years of creativity.
Even in the choice of the nomenclatura, the construction of the work and its topic, Lühl remains a classical composer, following in the tradition of Brahms, Tchaikovsky or young Rachmaninoff and Scriabin, avoiding extravagant experiments. Strongly attached to symbolism, his free pieces often carry enigmatic and meditative titles. Having finished a twin training in piano and conducting at the Conservatoire National de Paris in 1995, he never went back to it as a teacher, as so many do. Lühl is an international musician, and also feels, because of his family roots, a close artistic affinity with the Slavs and Germans. His music “lasts”, takes time to expand during long progressions. “Every work is a variation of the previous one with all its own innovations; the entire work of an artist actually is just a variation, a reflexion of his personality. [...] One has to find oneself through Beauty which one has so seek and find as one’s own Truth. It’s only like this that we can create our own style and our own musical personality, by using reflexes to formulate that which we like in our pieces. It’s in finding ourselves through music that we are capable of moving the listener, this silent judge who contributes to insuring a work’s perenity.”
Besides transcriptions and individual pieces his catalogue for piano alone includes eight sonatas, eleven ballads, thirty musical moments and about forty preludes, waltzes, etudes and suites. Today, it’s to Serge Rachmaninoff that he dedicates his piano activity with all his energy researching new and unedited works and recording them for Polymnie.

Lühl is an accomplished artist: an enthusiastic amateur of French Art Nouveau, the impressionist painters and Italian Renaissance Architecture. He is also the author of several essays, short stories and novels on philosophy, history, science-fiction as well as poetry and scientific works on musicology. His recordings are available at the music label POLYMNIE, for which he already recorded several works of his own, conducting an orchestra for his Fifth Symphony (POL 150 657), or playing the piano, and also six CDs of piano pieces by S. Rachmaninoff. He is planning to record his entire work (about 50 CDs).

4 Moments musicaux LWV 78
These 4 pieces, which were altogether written between March 6th and 8th 2003, belong to a long series of pieces entitled « moments musicaux », a musical structure Lühl will keep adding throughout his career.

Un secret LWV 79
This pendant to a former piece entitled « un sourire » [« a smile »] LWV 75, available in vol.5 of Lühl’s piano pieces, underlines the composer’s melodic tendencies, which are always accompanied by a complex yet discreet background.

3 Preludes LWV 81
Originally, these three pieces were written in December 2003 in a different order from the current presentation in this album, but Lühl decided to keep this new order to create a thread between the pieces’ different tonalities.

Ballad n°5 LWV 82
Among his eleven ballads available to date, the fifth one in very much inspired by the previous one in its pianistic writing.

2 Preludes LWV 83
En 2003, Lühl wrote two contrasted little pieces he entitled « preludes ». The last one ends the cycle with rare strength and determination.

12 Preludes LWV 89
These twelve pieces (July-August 2004) respect the tonal order of our occidental music system and were all written in Major. Indeed, his composition phase between opuses 89 to 91 is known to be his most prolific period, in which he almost composes one piece every day, mostly during his stay in Meran in South Tyrol, Italy.

Lühl-Dolgorukiy travaille en collaboration avec les éditions phonographiques Polymnie pour l’intégrale de l’enregistrement de ses œuvres. Sont déjà disponibles ses quatre premiers Quatuors à cordes (POL 480 243 et POL 480 364), le Requiem Vauban (POL 790 344), sa cinquième Symphonie sous sa direction (POL 990 361) et de nombreux CD Rachmaninoff, dont le deuxième Concerto pour piano op. 18 et la Rhapsodie sur un thème de Paganini dans une réduction pour deux pianos de l’auteur. D’autres albums sont en préparation.

Lühl's recordings are available at the music label Polymnie, for which he already recorded several works of his own, conducting an orchestra for his Fifth Symphony (POL 990 361), or playing the piano, and more recently a CD of piano pieces by S. Rachmaninoff and the Rhapsody on a theme by Paganini as well as the Second piano concerto op. 18 (POL 150 865). Lühl is planning to record his entire work (about 50 CDs).

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