Before being plunged into darkness, the room at La rose des vents fills with a varied, family audience, intrigued by the title of the show and the image of Odette, who settles in: “I have no idea what to expect, but the title ‘Sorcery for two pianos’ drew me in. I love the piano, and the sorcery aspect piqued my curiosity, I can’t wait!” quips our friend Didier. “I hope they don’t make the pianos fly,” jokes Didier. “Maybe they’ll make things come out of the piano, that could be funny, or maybe the piano will start playing by itself. Diabolus in musica, maybe that will be it tonight!”
“We discovered that we all use our hands to create emotions”
There are no flying pianos in “Sorcery for two pianos,” but escaped scores and the devil appearing in shadow play in response to the music performed by Adélaïde Panaget and Naïri Badal, the two pianists of the Duo Jápánón! : “The idea of this show was not necessarily to do something figurative around sorcery, but to offer visual effects, atmospheres, ambiances to immerse the listener in this beautiful repertoire inspired by sorcery, since we play “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, “A Night on Bald Mountain”, so music with a somewhat magical thematic,” says Adélaïde Panaget. Naïri Badal adds: “I would say that what was also interesting in the meeting with Antoine Terrieux and Philippe Beau is that we discovered that we all use our hands to create emotions. It was funny to see that there is a common vocabulary between magic and music.”
“Very young, I was immersed in music” Philippe Beau, shadow player
Music inspires Philippe Beau, a shadow player, who creates shadows with his hands during the show: “Very young, I was immersed in music because ultimately there is something very choreographic in shadows, hands dance, so it’s sure that it inspires me a lot. And then the music chosen by the Jápánón! duo is quite demanding, which also allows me to find new images,” he says.
This show allows the magicians to attract a different audience from what they usually encounter, and vice versa, specify the musicians, who have therefore revealed the world of magic: “I appreciate magic as a spectator,” explains Adélaïde Panaget. “But I absolutely do not practice it. And being with professionals is very impressive. I remember the first tricks they did to us, when for example the score dances to “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” by Paul Dukas. Frankly, we didn’t know how they did it, it was great. But we cannot keep the mystery, because there is a very large preparation for this show, there is a setup that lasts almost two days beforehand, and we cannot ignore that.”
“When I was a teenager, my mother told me that one day I told her that I absolutely needed a deck of cards”
And we met a musician who, unlike him, practices magic. Famous for his musical talents, pianist Pascal Amoyel is also a mentalist and presents himself as an “enlightened amateur” in this art. He tells his story of magic: “When I was a teenager, my mother told me that one day I told her that I absolutely needed a deck of cards. I went to get it and since then it has never left me. And I realized, after a while, that it wasn’t really magic, the card tricks that interested me, but rather something of the order of nihilism. I like it when a person has a deck of cards in their hand, when they lay the cards one after the other and then stop when they want. And having predicted the card where they stopped.”
