RECORD – The young label Oktav Records strives to highlight young artists, but also little-explored repertoires. It’s a double hit with this disc where mezzo Anaïs Bertrand and pianist Alexis Gournel are as much musicians as storytellers. Enchantment guaranteed.
There is this decor, first. That of a barn with imposing frames and obvious charm, in the heart of the Aubrac massif, where even a place has the name “Le bout du monde”, which sets an atmosphere. There is this desire, above all: that of recording there, in a countryside like a paradise, an album conducive to dreams and wonder, which would have poetry as its basis, and as performers artists inhabited by song as much as by the verb.
Tea for two
This is the genesis of the album See the Daythe creation of which first germinated in Paris, in Anne Le Bozec’s singing class. She knew all the talent of a young singer, Anaïs Bertrand, and a young composer, Fabien Touchard, who had already been able to experience their complicity around common projects. It was therefore necessary to be able to bring them together again, and immortalize their meeting around a record which would be joined by pianist Alexis Gournel. The great team was ready, all that remained was to head to the ends of the world.
And the program in all this? The idea was to go towards dreams and oneirism, therefore. What could be better, then, than melodies nourished by poetry… Like those signed Fauré, with his cycle Eve’s Song (1910), evocation of a first morning of the world inspired by the writings of the Belgian symbolist poet Charles Van Lerberghe. In ten songs, it is about the discovery of Paradisfrom fascination at the sight of burning roses in the middle of the night, or even the celebration of this living water “which descends by gentle slopes towards the original ocean”. Poetry again with the Gray songs by Reynaldo Hahn, musical transcription of writings by Paul Verlaine, including the famous Autumn song (“The long sobs…”), or even The Exquisite Hour. Verlaine, who was also inspired by Fabien Touchard himself to compose three melodies closing the disc in the form of a mini-cycle called… “See the day”, which is intended to be an opportunity to celebrate major poetic art : “Music, again and again! “.
-Poetry at every end of song
In the heart of the countryside, here, at every end…of song, there are rhymes and quatrains which the mezzo Anaïs Bertrand seizes with an eloquence as vibrant as it is inhabited. It’s about singing of course, which is done with a voice with an exquisitely sweet tone, with evanescent intonations, playing the card of sensitivity much more than that of a sonic power which would be very unsuitable here. But you have to say and tell, too, and then, melody after melody, a magnetic storyteller is revealed, who whispers when necessary, raises the tone (slightly) if necessary, and plays with a more true-than-life cry when evoking. of death or autumn. All with an instrument rich in long breathing and a vibrato full of mastery and generosity, adding to the poetry of a declamation that Verlaine himself would undoubtedly not have denied. A declamation which takes on frankly psalmodic features, and in any case solemn, when reciting the verses set to music by Fabien Touchard whose music, percussive but nevertheless melodious, intends above all to put itself at the service of the voice, and so poetry above all else.
Here is an album where the word and the verb have more than ever the value of a base, a singer-storyteller, Anaïs Bertrand, finding in Alexis Gournal an ideal accompanist. Behind his piano, he announces the atmospheres according to the force of his strikes and his pedal strokes, knowing how to describe landscapes of tranquility as well as pre-mortem twilights. Above all, the instrumentalist intends to remain, imperturbably, in perfect symbiosis with the voice, in ways of dialogue which make the literary force of these quatrains all the more striking.
À lire également : A Voce di a Terra : Corse et Âme
Bring music and poetry together? More than ever, with this album, the bet has been successful…
Who is it for?
- For those who still doubted that music was poetry in its own right: when listening to this record, the thing is crystal clear.
- For lovers of lyrical art who, after listening to a little too much Wagner or Verdi (we won’t do it again), would like to return to a little more gentleness and serenity.
- For those who know how to say “The long sobs of the violins of autumn…” without remembering the rest: this is the opportunity to relearn the essential poem.
Why we like it:
- Because a crazy impression of well-being and inner serenity permeates the listener as the tracks of this CD scroll by.
- Because so much poetry cannot do any harm to our souls, battered by current events that are often far too gloomy
- Because it’s not every day that you can listen to a work that no one has ever been able to hear before.
