Happy Reunion

SSC3513 2007-03-13

Track List

Shine - 2:33
Valsitude - 3:07
Sing For Your Supper - 4:48
God Bless The Child - 7:15
Nuages - 4:00
Parisian Thoroughfare - 4:33
Grandeur et Cadence - 3:16
Stumbling - 4:07
Et si l'on improvisait? - 3:41

Musicians

Stephane Grappelli - violin
Martial Solal - piano

The violinist has a grace, supreme elegance and generous lyricism that evoke the Renaissance, the Classical era and Romanticism all at the same time, with just a hint, a handsome hint, of Impressionism. Over his music there always hovers an atmosphere reminiscent of the fêtes galantes, of gardens a la française, that is irreplaceable. Not to mention that apparent facility which constitutes a homage that his mastery pretends to pay to casualness.
With the pianist, an invincible repulsion for the cliches, complacency and beaten tracks of others (even the geniuses) makes adventure compulsory, and as he hasn't the knack of spontaneous generation, it's himself that Martial discovers when he travels to the end of the unknown. Being neither black, nor American, he always finds the man we recognize inside him, or rather the man we think we recognize, an illusion that he quickly explodes a phrase later.The latter are both men of dialogue, as if we didn't
know. Here they are, finally, both reunited on a single recording.
And if this recording is precious, it is precisely thanks to the music, at once one of the most intelligent, and one of the most sensitive, pieces that can be heard today.