The composer explains his search for explosive confrontations in works that appear on CD after a free concert on April 5 at the (Théâtre du Gymnase) in Paris.
After more than thirty years spent following his “borderline” creations – like La Confession impudique (1992), an opera in which a woman admits having led her husband to death by sexual exhaustion – Bernard is no longer asked Cavanna if he is from the writer’s family (the author of the Ritals was a school friend of his father) but it is still so difficult to establish his artistic filiation. And, even more, to grasp its deep nature.
Not enraged for two cents, when he scratches paper in “Compositor triumphans” (Victoire de la musique 2000 obliges) in one of the cages which mark out the route of Zoo Muzique (2003), a show by Jacques Rebotier. Committed to the second degree when, in the aisles of the covered market of Nogent-sur-Marne (Val-de-Marne), he tries to sell CDs of contemporary music (“1 europiece”) to passers-by or to exchange one for two mangoes (introductory scene of Skin on the table, a documentary by Delphine de Blic released in 2010).
Considering today the 70-year-old composer in the house he has occupied since 1994 in the Belleville district of Paris, one still feels a strange feeling. The iconoclastic musician is seated at his piano, a 1928 Pleyel, and we are on church stalls salvaged from a flea market! At each meeting, the same humility and the same sweetness, but, each time, a new posture. How is it, to present on April 5, at the Théâtre du Gymnase, in Paris, to detail to the public the program of the evening linked to the release, on April 1, of his album Concertos & Bagatelles? No doubt with a smile on his face and the falsely hesitant speech, to let go of one of those good words that the former director likes