Jonathan Harvey: Bhakti (Live) Le Balcon & Maxime Pascal

• Jonathan Harvey (1939 - 2012): Bhakti:
• 1 Harvey: Bhakti: I. — (Live) 06:06
• 2 Harvey: Bhakti: II. — (Live) 02:01
• 3 Harvey: Bhakti: III. — (Live) 04:43
• 4 Harvey: Bhakti: IV. — (Live) 03:56
• 5 Harvey: Bhakti: V. — (Live) 04:24
• 6 Harvey: Bhakti: VI. — (Live) 03:27
• 7 Harvey: Bhakti: VII. — (Live) 04:17
• 8 Harvey: Bhakti: VIII. — (Live) 04:32
• 9 Harvey: Bhakti: IX. — (Live) 04:20
• 10 Harvey: Bhakti: X. — (Live) 03:10
• 11 Harvey: Bhakti: XI. — (Live) 06:17
• 12 Harvey: Bhakti: XII. — (Live) 04:47
• Total Runtime 52:00

Info for Jonathan Harvey: Bhakti (Live)

Strongly influenced by Hindu spirituality, Bhakti is made up of twelve movements, each followed by a few lines from the Rig Veda, a four-thousand-year-old text that, in the composer’s words, are “the key to a transcendental consciousness.”

Indeed, the mixed music (acoustic instruments combined with “fixed” electronic sounds) naturally conveys a sense of a quest for transcendence. This is clear when listening to Bhakti: the electronics appear only after several minutes, emerging alone once the instrumentalists have stopped playing.

Here, the electronics embody a presence aimed at reaching the soul of the performers. It feels like a small ceremony—dignified yet absurd, devout yet technological, contemporary yet four millennia old. After about ten minutes, the origin, source, or nature of the sound no longer matters: you already feel your spirit lifting off the edge.

Bhakti is scored for fifteen players and quadraphonic tape. It is cast in 12 movements, and lasts around 50 minutes. A quotation from the Rig Veda is appended to the end of each of its movements – Sanskrit hymns written four thousand years ago. “They are keys to a transcendent consciousness”, Harvey writes; its title means “devotion”. The tape element of the work consists of sounds drawn the instrumental ensemble transformed and mixed by computer. In the piece it has numerous functions: dialogue, transformation, memory, anticipation, ‘simultaneous translation’ and of reaching beyond the instrumental scale to a more universal dimension. As Tom Service noted of Bhakti in the Guardian: “technology is a way of extending the reach of acoustic instruments into other realms of space and time, to literally and metaphorically go beyond physical boundaries”.

Le Balcon
Maxime Pascal, conductor
Augustin Muller, IRCAM live-electronics

Le Balcon
was founded in 2008 in Paris.

The founding members are a conductor (Maxime Pascal), a sound engineer (Florent Derex), a pianist (Alphonse Cemin) and three composers (Juan Pablo Carreño, Mathieu Costecalde, Pedro García Velásquez), who have gathered around their project an ensemble of instrumentalists, singers and artists from all disciplines.

Thanks to the variety of these profiles, Le Balcon undergoes a metamorphosis with each new project and concert, in terms of personnel, visual identity and scenography, as well as in its relationship with sound and electronic music.

Maxime Pascal
has quickly established himself as one of the most brilliant interpreters of 20th-century and contemporary music of his generation. Pascal's musical journey has been driven by a passionate exploration of sound: upon entering the Paris Conservatoire, he relentlessly explored a vast repertoire, from classical works to pieces by 20th-century composers such as Morton Feldman, Gérard Grisey, and Pierre Boulez.

In 2008, together with five other students from the Conservatoire, he founded the ensemble Le Balcon, an innovative collective known for its amplified concerts that allow the audience to immerse themselves "inside the sound". Le Balcon takes its name from the play by Jean Genet of the same name, echoing the playwright's deep exploration of representation and embodiment. A key player in the contemporary music scene, Le Balcon is engaged in ambitious projects like Karlheinz Stockhausen's monumental Licht cycle. The longest opera to have been written (twenty-nine hours of music designed to be performed over seven days), Licht is a work Pascal considers his life's work. In September 2026, Le Balcon presented Mittwoch aus Licht, the third day of the cycle, at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, and in May 2027 will perform works by Fausto Romitelli at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg.

One of three Principal Guest Conductors at the Deutsche Oper Berlin from the 2026-27 season, Pascal conducts Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie in concert in February 2027, followed by new opera productions in 2027-28. A regular presence at the Salzburg Festival, Pascal's direction of Saint François d'Assise (2026) was met with great critical acclaim, the Salzburger Nachrichten dubbing him "a future grand master of modernism" and the Süddeutsche Zeitung commenting on his ability to "translate the complete intellectual penetration of the score into rapturous emotionality". Previous appearances at the Festival include a new production of Péter Eötvös' Tri Sestri (2025), which won him the Austrian Music Theatre Prize 2026 for Best Musical Direction, and The Greek Passion by Bohuslav Martinů (2023), named "Best Production of the Year 2023" by the Oper! Awards. In 2026 Pascal also returned to the Teatro alla Scala to lead a new production of Pelléas et Mélisande, and to the Tokyo Nikikai Opera for Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust.

As Artist in Residence at the Musikverein Wien in 2026-27, Pascal conducts a series of five concerts, with the Wiener Symphoniker (Berlioz, Grande Messe des Morts), Le Balcon (Jonathan Harvey, Bhakti), the ORF RSO Wien (Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu) and members of the Wiener Philharmoniker (Mahler arr. Schönberg, Das Lied von der Erde).

Continuing his tenure as Chief Conductor of the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, he conducts all nine Beethoven symphonies over the course of two weeks in January 2027 to mark 200 years since the composer's death. Pascal returns to the London Symphony Orchestra alongside Isabelle Faust, and makes debuts with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Münchner Philharmoniker and Luzerner Sinfonieorchester.

Booklet for Jonathan Harvey: Bhakti (Live)