 Depuis le phénoménal succès d'Amélie Poulain, la musique de Yann Tiersen continue de franchir les frontières, qu'elles soient celles des pays ou celles des genres musicaux. A preuve ce nouvel album de ses musiques devenues si familières. Avec un talent plein de délicatesse poétique, le guitariste grec George Tossikian joue avec un vrai bonheur les œuvres brèves du compositeur fraîchement cinquantenaire. Les transcriptions qu'il nous propose élargissent le monde de Tiersen, ou plutôt le prolonge en respectant son goût de l’ellipse, d'un certain minimalisme tendre et ironique, son talent pour les mélodies qui semblent autant d'évidences improbables qui campent un climat qui lui est propre. On pourra toujours chercher des sources à cet art (Satie par exemple), mais cela pourra paraître assez vain. Après le piano de Jeroen Van Veen (également paru chez Brilliant), on se laissera surtout aller au plaisir des histoires que racontent ces musiques et où la réunion des deux talents, celui du compositeur et celui de l'arrangeur-interpète, semble ce souvenir des vers de García Lorca où six cordes, six demoiselles, trois de chair et trois d'argent, dansent avec les rêves. (Marc Ossorguine)  Played by Jeroen van Veen, the solo-piano collection (95129) of themes from Yann Tiersen’s film scores is a Brilliant Classics best seller. Now also available, some of Tiersen’s best-known melodies arranged for guitar by George Tossikian, who has given many successful concerts of this repertoire. Tiersen shot to worldwide fame with his quirky, haunting score for the Oscar-winning Amélie (2001), but by that point he had gained considerable experience composing soundtracks for short films and incidental music for plays. Several of these pieces ended up on his first album, Valse des Monstres (1995); they also featured intricate arrangements incorporating various instruments. 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 in the music of Chopin, Satie, Philip Glass and Michael Nyman. His gentle melodies lends themselves to the intimate language of the guitar, and Tossikian has selected pieces from throughout Tiersen’s career, focusing on these two albums but also including the title track La Plage. Since the days of Segovia, guitarists have practised the art of transcription, and the Greek guitarist George Tossikian continues that tradition with this album. In pieces scored for solo piano or violin, he has aimed for close fidelity, whereas in the ensemble numbers he has taken a freer, more creative approach in order to recreate the colours of Tiersen’s score using guitar techniques such as natural harmonics and tremolo. The result is no less delightful or captivating than the originals. One of the most gifted and creative of modern Greek guitarists, George Tossikian was born in Piraeus in 1981. He has made several fine recordings of Greek and Latin-American music; this album marks his debut on Brilliant Classics.

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