Les Sentiments D'Amour (Feelings of Love)

Les Sentiments D’Amour Les Sentiments D’Amour (Feelings of Love) is the result of a two-year collaboration between myself (as composer) and Lebanese-born, Paris Conservatory trained virtuoso solo pianist Nada Loutfi.

I first heard Nada play at a concert at The Pen and Brush (New York City). I was impressed with her playing, breadth of repertoire, presence, and relationship with the audience. Several concerts later I approached Nada to ask if she would consider recording some of my classical solo piano pieces. What followed was a true collaboration, the result of which is the current album.

In no small measure, Nada’s performance experience helped to “mature” many of the pieces. Her compositional suggestions elevated the “pianism” of several of the pieces while maintaining the original integrity. Each piece is now more complete as a result of the application of her performance acumen and thoughtful interpretation. By working closely with Nada I had the opportunity to expand my knowledge of solo piano composition.

Each piece on this CD is a “character” sketch in a way—even though one piece is about a place (“Ballade Pour Yotvata”), another about a cat (“Mon Chat Le Roi”). As with my first two albums (“A Summer Afternoon With You” and “Making the Music Our Own”), the music is about feelings. For me, music should always convey some kind of accessible feeling to an audience—in response to a person, a place, or an event—otherwise music is just an intellectual exercise. Music should be moving. It should touch an audience in some way.

Les Sentiments D’Amour is mostly about people who have moved me significantly enough to capture these feelings in a mode of musical expression. I hope these feelings, these “characters” expressed in musical terms resonate with you.

Eugene Marlow
Summer 2006

Sometimes a performer has the opportunity to influence the outcome of the compositional process. This was the case of my work with New York composer Eugene Marlow.

Les Sentiments D’Amour was a two-year collaboration during which I discovered how to edit music for my instrument, the piano. I found ways to make each piece as good as possible, even suggesting musical elements in some cases. The different character of each piece inspired me. This led me to suggest an order to the entire 20-piece cycle so that they flow continuously one to the next in what seemed to make musical sense to me from a performance perspective.

Eugene’s music has extremely diverse colors, from traditional harmonies to, in some cases, experimental writing. However, some selections sound to me like they could not have been written anywhere else but New York City. The music also has a neo-romantic flair, is somewhat inspired by the French chanson tradition, and has some definite jazz influences. Altogether, this makes for some unique material, very accessible to a wide audience.

This was an extremely enriching experience and I hope many of you will enjoy the outcome.

Nada Loutfi
Summer 2006

“With elegance, beauty and consummate skill, Eugene Marlow captures and projects a remarkably wide range of deeply felt sentiments — and without ever being sentimental. Pianist Nada Loutfi is the work’s ideal advocate in her wonderfully sensitive and finely balanced interpretations.”

—Paul Moravec
2004 Pulitzer Prize-Winning Composer

“Eugene Marlow’s ‘Les Sentiments D’Amour’ is a listening pleasure from beginning to end. This collection of 20 chansons for piano, while infused with rich harmonies that clearly reveal Marlow’s background as a jazz composer and player, also stands firmly in the classical tradition of the brief, characteristic piano pieces best exemplified by Schumann, Grieg, Janacek and Bartok. Marlow has accomplished the difficult feat of writing 20 very individual, unique, personal, expressive and heartfelt works of music. Pianist Nada Loutfi strikes to the heart of each piece with songful, passionate performances.”

—Stan Grill
Composer-in-Residence
One World Symphony

Title: Les Sentiments D’Amour (Feelings of Love)
Catalog #: C-1-2006

Release date: 2006
UPC: 70026120097
©2006 MEII Enterprises/BMI