Marcel !

You can’t say A without saying B: pianist Marcel Worms took up the challenge, to record the second book after his double album with the complete first book of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier (2020). Bach completed the second book twenty years after the first, and in those two decades his composing has deepened even further. The Preludes have emancipated and are sometimes longer than the accompanying Fugues, the complexity of the music has increased, and the work as a whole is more abstract and spiritual. Add to that the length of the work (about half an hour longer than book I) and the assignment for the pianist is clear.

The Well-Tempered Clavier (Book 1) contains 24 preludes and 24 fugues, each piece a personality with its own unique character. A prelude is always followed by a fugue in the same key. With an endless fantasy Bach lets the different voices speak, each for itself yet also in dialogue with and attuned to each other. A perfect technical mastery of the form goes hand in hand with the ability to translate all conceivable human emotions into sound.

The three sections of this Triptych can be described as follows: the left-hand panel — Misery — depicts the vale of tears; Transitio on the right-hand panel represents a transformation in everyday life, whilst Transfiguratio , the central panel, portrays the brilliant colours of transcendental bliss.

This recording came to fruition thanks to nearly 25 years of effort. In 1997, Marcel Pérès and his Ensemble Organum began a simultaneous exploration of the Mozarabic rite (the liturgical chant peculiar to the Christians living in Spain at the time of Arabrule) and of the Samaa spiritual practice of Morocco. Setting aside the theological differences between the two faiths, the artists discovered a great deal of kinship between the two forms of musical expression. A veritable utopia, the idea for this recording then suggested itself: to regain the lost accord of human brotherhood through music.

"Around Gus" is a title full of eloquence: it is of course a tribute, but not an usual one: talent is more than necessary to salute Gus Viseur in one phrase: the Django Reinhardt of the Accordion. A little bit shy, Marcel Loeffler has realized an incredible album full of radiance, and poetry including not only Viseur's compositions but also original works. Marcel Loeffler has also lived the accordion return in Jazz, the famous "Jazz Musette" after a couple of years of purgatory. He has been one of the first musicians to bring it back to swing with his partners, his gypsy "family", the one of Biréli Lagrène, Mandino Reinhardt, Yorgui Loeffler among others. Interpreting Viseur with an incredible authority, the one of a peaceful genious, a great distiller of poetry, it is Marcel Loeffler trademark. Far away from the usual interpretation, devoid of soul and which used to combine the Accordion with submachines full of notes.

It was a significant step: the decision of the French composer Erik Satie, in 1884, to write his first name henceforth with a “k”. He was born on 17 May 1866 as Eric Satie in Normandy’s Honfleur, from where England lies almost in view. His mother, born in London, had English and Scottish blood. And in his work and in his personage, irony, understatement, and British-sounding humour are never far away. Despite an unmistakably French sound in his music, he did not regard himself as a musicien français, as his friend Debussy styled himself on his card.