Louis Vierne - Solitude, Op. 44

Louis Vierne (1870 - 1937) - Solitude, poem for piano, Op. 44 (1918)

I. Hantise [0:00]
II. Nuit Blanche [5:30]
III. Vision Hallucinante [12:37]
IV. La Ronde Fantastique des Revenants [16:03]

Olivier Gardon, piano (1994)

Louis Vierne's Solitude is a suite for piano in four movements, typically lasting around 24 minutes.

Around 1916, Louis Vierne, who was born nearly blind, underwent an operation to address his deteriorating eyesight. The operation resulted in complications that led to an extended and unpleasant series of further treatments and operations lasting until 1918. During this period, he also contracted bronchitis, and upon recovery, he learned of his son Jacques Vierne's death in World War I, composing his Piano Quintet, Op. 42 in his son's memory. A few months later, his brother René was also killed in the war, resulting in the work Solitude.

Each movement of Solitude has an epigraph penned by Vierne himself:

I. Le souvenir des disparus hante le solitaire. (The memory of the lost haunts the lonely.)
II. Ô douleur, invisible compagne, tu veilles inlassablement près de celui dont tu as mis l'âme en deuil et déchiré le cœur. (O pain, invisible companion, you watch untiringly near the one whose soul you have placed in mourning and whose heart you have torn apart.)
III. Arrière! spectre sanglant, si tu n'es qu'une vaine image!... (Away! bloody spectre, if you are only a vain image!...)
IV. Troublés dans leur repos par les échos de la joie des vivants, les morts se lèvent et dansent aussi sous le clair de lune. (Disturbed in their rest by the echoes of the joy of the living, the dead also rise and dance under the moonlight.)

(source: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitude_(Vierne))

* If you have or can provide better translations of the epigraphs, feel free to let me know, because these are just machine translated right now. *

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