Matmatah et Tourne le Compteur

Chantal Santon-Jeffery est maintenant bien connue des baroqueux. Elle mène une belle carrière aussi bien dans le baroque français qu’italien des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, participant notamment à la plupart des résurrections du Palazetto Bru Zane. Depuis quelques années, on la croise même dans l’opéra contemporain, Janacek ou Britten. Il faut dire que son soprano ample, son timbre brillant, la qualité de sa diction et son attention à la dramatisation des textes ont de quoi séduire, d’autant que la dame est aventureuse.

Un rayon de soleil traverse l’azur du petit matin et réchauffe le cœur d’une douce caresse… Dès le premier mouvement (largo) du Trio en la Majeur, Sébastien Marq expose son jeu doux et velouté, léger et transcendant. Et l’on s’émerveille, béat, devant la beauté du son, la justesse des sentiments, et ce toucher si délicat qui vous berce et vous emmène dans un jardin d’Eden. Le voyage s’achève sur quatre mêmes notes, plus suaves et doucereuses que les précédentes.

Erik Satie is a beacon around which all kinds of musicians never cease to turn and marvel. And it’s been the case for more than 100 years. American minimalists (Glass, Reich, Adams, Riley, La Monte Young) today recognize in him a kind of spiritual father. Through this double-disc, I wanted to pay a tribute to him, through his works but also those of his friends, his followers and his heirs. I thus discovered new works never recorded (Cliquet-Pleyel, Mesens, Dortu, Fargeat) and also generated new compositions. My personal approach to sincerity also led me to choose, for the interpretation of his works, a piano that he could have known: a Blüthner from 1900. As a historically well-informed musician, the last track of the first disc, Je te veux, has been recorded on Pleyel droit from 1923, not very well tuned, with hazardous mechanics and a good cabaret taste. Here is a particular discographic object with very subjective musical choices. After three records dedicated to some American figures (Moondog, Glass and Hovhaness) I was dead set on showing how important Erik Satie was for a few musicians, and to illustrate how he is a tutelary and smiling figure of a contemporary musical movement open to side steps - let's call them minimalists or not, it doesn't matter. I have brought together all these figures under the term "gymnopedists".

De la période rock punky initiale (« La Fille du Père Noël ») aux tubes transgenres (« Et moi, et moi, et moi » ou « Les Play-boys », une maille à l’endroit de la provocation, une maille à l’envers de l’irrésistible succès populaire), le disque prend rapidement l’aspect d’une collection de madeleines de Proust, car on a tous en nous quelque chose de Jacques Dutronc.

Le Peuple de l'Herbe is a French band playing electronic music, afrobeat and dub.

For his latest recording directing Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet has revived Sémélé by Marin Marais – the final opera by one of the leading composers from the reign of Louis XIV. Known above all for his compositions for the viola da gamba, Marais the composer was at the same time the author of a number of tragédies lyriques which he wrote for the Académie royale de Musique. Even to this day it has only been Alcyone which has attracted the attention of music lovers and musicians. Yet Sémélé – first performed in 1709 – arrives now full of music to charm and seduce the listener: a sparkling prologue honouring Bacchus, a set of arias with a freshly-minted appeal, a marvellously inventive diabolical scene, divertissements rich in character; all this leading up to an earthquake scene memorably anticipating the later work of Rameau.