Federico Mompou, Boris Tishchenko, Olivier Hutman and Lamine Cissokho, Zaho de Sagazan, Maissiat, Matt Elliott, Clément Froissart, Naïssam Jalal

• Federico Mompou
  quiet music
  Stephen Hough (piano).

Pochette from the album « Silent Music », by Federico Mompou, by the pianist Stephen Hough. HYPERION RECORDS/UNIVERSAL MUSIC

Already in 1996, a first recording by British pianist Stephen Hough revealed the secret affinities that linked him to the music of the Spanish composer Federico Mompou (1893-1987). A revelation confirmed by this new album devoted to the four volumes of quiet music inspired by Saint John of the Cross. So many pieces of introspective spirituality, to which Stephen Hough breathes not only mystery and poetry but also striking visions, between fervor and anguish, candor and tenderness. The sensual rigor of the touch, the sound imagination served by a dizzying palette of nuances, but even more the desire to push the expression to its smallest entrenchments, sometimes to the point of blurring the music, sign a personal reading sometimes close to vertigo, inducting Stephen Hough into the circle of major Mompou performers. Marie Aude Roux

1 CD Hyperion Records/Universal Music.

• Boris Tishchenko
  String Quartets N^os 1 and 5. Quintet with piano
  Quatuor Tchalik, Dania Tchalik (piano).

Cover of the album “Boris Tishchenko”, by the Tchalik Quartet. ALKONOST/UVM DISTRIBUTION

Better known for his symphonies and ballets than for his chamber music, the Russian Boris Tishchenko (1939-2010) is a prolific composer whose identity is not always easy to identify, as this program recorded by the talented Tchalik siblings (three boys, two girls). Of the two string quartets reproduced here, it is the 1^is (written at the age of 18) which makes the strongest impression because it is part of the descent of Dimitri Shostakovich without suffering from the reference and testifies to a very clear ideal on the national level. THE 5^e, on the other hand, no longer consists in situating oneself in the history of a country, but in that of a genre, the string quartet, going back to its classical origins. Tishchenko likes to reveal leads to immediately blur them but, this time, the influences seem heavy despite an interpretation that is as much worth by the quality of the line (delicate, biting, unctuous) as by the variety of the color (individual and collective). Equally complex, the quintet with piano is nevertheless animated by a force capable of transcending its rather heterogeneous nature. Pierre Gervasoni

1 CD Alkonost/UVM Distribution.

• Olivier Hutman and Lamine Cissokho
  Double Skyline

Cover of the album “Double Skyline”, by Olivier Hutman and Lamine Cissokho. CRISTAL RECORDS

Chords, modes, timbres, rhythms, two continents, a single story: pianist Olivier Hutman and kora player Lamine Cissokho offer a magnificent exchange of views with Double Skyline. Double horizon for two beings related in music, one (Hutman), overactive on the international scene, and the other (Cissokho), griot of West Africa installed in Sweden, playing a magnificent kora with his initials. The kora (harp-lute) is made up of a hollow half-calabash through which a long handle passes, on which twenty-three strings are mounted. Where the guards would talk about “complicity”the accountants of « duo » and the alienated “competition”, we will content ourselves with evoking the strange friendship of the musicians, always in love with a double understanding against an implicit background of immense talents. All audiences – from complete beginners to accomplished artists – the powerful enigma of musical evidence. This gift of jazz. Francis Marmande

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