Levente – Lost Works

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Levente’s 8th studio album, entitled Lost Works, is once again a thematic concept album containing musical interpretations of eight lost, destroyed, or not yet recovered stolen paintings.

The chosen masterpieces, ranging from Leonardo da Vinci to Vermeer to Dali, allowed, even required, the musical composition to span a range of styles from Renaissance early music to Baroque to meditative electronic soundscapes.

The album is to be released in all digital download and streaming formats by 15 July, with an Amazon CD following. As in previous works, the Transylvanian- born and UK-based Levente has departed from the mainstream loop- and rhythm-centred electronic music. Instead, quoting Vangelis as the main influence, Levente views the electronic instruments as limitless musical and sound design tools that can blend and connect vastly different musical traditions if the composer sets out to create electronic music with specific intent.

The programmatic and thematic approach aimed at describing and evoking specific imagery can then result in music that spans many different styles and genres across centuries of secular and sacred music.

On Lost Works, the musical journey takes the listener through elements of sacred choral music, the mood of intimate family concerts in a Baroque-era home, the emotional images of a Renaissance-era battlefield, the eerie ambience of a cloister cemetery covered by snow, the abstract thought processes of a cubist painter…

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The following eight paintings served as a basis for the material on this album:

Salvador Dali’s The Art of Cinema (1944), a painting that was part of the cycle The Seven Lively Arts, was destroyed in a fire.

Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man (c. 1513) was stolen by the Nazis, and it has been missing since Word War II.

Carl Friedrich Schinkel’s Cathedral Towering Over a Town (c. 1813) was destroyed by fire, but some copies of the painting still exist.

Leonardo da Vinci’s fresco, The Battle of Anghiari (1505), has a fascinating history. After decades of search, recent evidence suggests it is under later frescoes in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Charcoal studies and sketches survive, also engravings and a copy by Rubens give us an idea of what the fresco must have looked like.

Rembrandt van Rijn’s only seascape, the Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1633), was stolen in 1990 and not yet retrieved.

Caspar David Friedrich’s atmospheric Cloister Cemetery in the Snow (1818) disappeared in 1945.

Johannes Vermeer’s The Concert (1664), which depicts a man and two women performing music, was stolen in 1990.

Pablo Picasso’s Collotype entitled The Painter (1963) was lost in a plane crash in 1998.

Track details:
1. Vanishings I. (01:37)
2. Salvador Dali – The Art of Cinema (05:26)
3. Raphael – Portrait of a Young Man (05:29)
4. Karl Friedrich Schinkel – Cathedral Towering Over a Town (03:30)
5. Vanishings II. (02:10)
6. Leonardo da Vinci – The Battle of Anghiari (07:07)
7. Rembrandt van Rijn – Storm on the Sea of Galilee (03:48)
8. Vanishings III. (01:45)
9. Caspar David Friedrich – Cloister Cemetery in the Snow (06:17)
10. Johannes Vermeer – The Concert (04:49)
11. Pablo Picasso – The Painter (05:48)
12. Vanishings IV. (02:15)All tracks composed, arranged and performed by Levente.

Album cover based on an engraving depicting Leonardo’s lost fresco, The Battle of Anghiari.

The album’s information and biographical details are  at  http://leventeth.wixsite.com/lostworks

Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/album/36HrhNGfbg2nXKZFZLjc9L?si=5qlecHSBRC-sO6Ws9H7unA

A press release by the artist