- Louise Chisson and Tamara Atschba
20th Century Feminine
Nocturne and From a Spring Morning by Lili Boulanger. Sonata for violin and piano No. 4 by Grazyna Bacewicz. Sonata for violin and piano by Galina Ustvolskaya. Jennifer Higdon’s Poetic Thong. Louise Chisson (violin), Tamara Atschba (piano).
A monster nerve and a matching talent characterize the album recorded by the French violinist Louise Chisson (Viennese by adoption), and her accomplice, the Georgian pianist, Tamara Atschba. Both dared a program devoted to the music of composers of the XXe and XXIe centuries. If the two scores of Lili Boulanger still smell here and there the scent of Debussystes, the fourth sonata by the prolific Grazyna Bacewicz, between Polish folklore inspiration and unbridled classical writing, requires a reading of great dynamic intensity. As for the wild music of the Russian Galina Oustvolskaïa, it will bring the violin to incandescence, the keyboard to the confines of reason. The disc ends with String Poetic by the American Jennifer Higdon, a 2006 piece in five movements, which combines extreme virtuosity (the piano immediately plunges us into a fiery furnace), invention of timbres (the “preparation” of a few notes on the keyboard sometimes gives the impression of ‘a third instrument), fancy tone (fast and hard, contemplative, casual…). The two musicians compete in vitality, panache, emotion, and make this 20th Century Feminine a major event. Marie-Aude Roux
1 CD Hänssler Classic/Naxos.
- Kenneth Brown
Love People
Although marketed in mid-December 2021, Love People by Kenneth Brown allows for a good start to the jazz year 2022. Drummer and composer – he signed seven of the eleven titles of his third album as a leader – Kenneth Brown, one of the sons of pianist Donald Brown, gathered around a trio formed with pianist Taber Gable and double bassist Darryl Hall, trumpeter Russell Gunn, and saxophonists Greg Tardy, Will Boyd and Jamel Mitchell, who perform on various pieces. Which illustrate the diversity of Kenneth Brown’s approaches. Hard-bop upon entry into the album with A Place For Togetherness, soulful breakthrough in the resumption of the standard Can’t Give You Anything but Love, with singer Candice Ivory as a guest, jazz always with funk elements in All At Once, urban pop revival of Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana, anchored in the blues and jazz of the 1950s and 1960s, talentedly interpreted… Kenneth Brown is a drummer attentive to the melodic framework, leaving his companions the space of often brilliant improvisation phases. Sylvain Siclier
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