Pianist Alain Roche Performs on Suspended Piano at Olympics Closing Ceremony

Roche was accompanying tenor Benjamin Bernheim in Fauré’s "Hymne à Apollon"

The closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics featured several notable classical musicians, but the highlight was a rendition of Fauré’s "Hymne à Apollon", performed by French tenor Benjamin Bernheim and Swiss pianist Alain Roche.

In a visual spectacle, Roche played on a piano that was suspended in mid-air, high above the Stade de France.

The "Hymne à Apollon" has close links to the Olympics: Fauré composed it based on ancient hymn texts that had been discovered in Athens towards the end of the nineteenth century, and it was heard as an Olympic anthem at the first Olympic Congress in 1894.

Bernheim and Roche's performance featured a brand-new arrangement of the work, composed especially for the 2024 Olympics.

The performance was an extension of Roche's long-term project SOLSTICE TO SOLSTICE, which saw him give 182 dawn concerts on a suspended piano every day from December 22, 2023 (the winter solstice) to June 20, 2024 (the summer solstice).

At each of these concerts, Roche played a piece of his own, entitled Winter Solstice. For each new concert, he altered and re-composed the material slightly, so that the piece would gradually morph into something else altogether — a new work titled Summer Solstice.

You can hear Alain Roche speaking about his SOLSTICE TO SOLSTICE project below.