The musical poet of the Languedoc, Déodat de Séverac never entirely
lacked for adherents on disc. From Casadesus and Solomon - unlikely
seeming, but possessed of strong French training - to the composer’s
friend and propagandist Blanche Selva, the 78 catalogues were
not devoid of his piano music. We had to wait for larger scale
tributes from such as Aldo Ciccolini on EMI and more recently
still from Jordi Masó on Naxos, to experience a wider range
of music, from the viewpoint of a single pianist. Such is also
now the case with this disc from Solstice.
François-Michel Rignol has been recorded in the excellent acoustic
of the Chapelle de l’Ermitage de Font-Romeu, of which a beautiful
colour photograph is printed in the booklet. Sensibly his disc
presents one of the composer’s masterpieces, the cycle Cerdaña.
Despite Fauré and Debussy’s advocacy, Séverac never seemed to
penetrate Parisian metropolitanism, and his early death, before
the age of fifty, allied to his geographical remoteness in French
Catalonia, further removed him from sight and hearing. Cerdaña
will appeal to anyone who responds to Albéniz. Its picturesque
scenes and terrain-crossing vistas are allied to a very personal
sense of rhythm and of fêtes and fiesta. The mule-train crossing
the mountains trudges wearily but supported by some Debussian
harmonies, whilst when Séverac embeds a festive scene it’s invariably
contrasted, as it doubtless should be, with other more reflective
and personal material. Les Muletiers devant le Christ de
Lliva is the fourth of the five scenes, and one that Blanche
Selva recorded back in the 1920s. It’s intriguing to hear Séverac
exploit Franck’s Prelude, Choral and Fugue in this
work’s nobly rolled chords—as it was a work Selva much admired
and indeed recorded. If anything, and slightly tauter too, Selva
is even graver and more austere than Rignol.
The church acoustic there delivers a bit of an echo swaddling
Baigneuses au soleil and because the recording, to
compensate, I assume, is quite close-up we can hear the pedal
action. Again Selva was more incisive and quicksilver, tempo-wise,
but Rignol’s playing is fine in its own terms. He plays four
of the set of En Vacances, charming old-school pieces
and much lighter than Cerdaña with its Schumannesque
lullaby being perceptively played in particular. The larger
scale single movement Sous les lauriers roses was composed
in 1919. It journeys from the carnivalesque to a more brittly
coloured realm. It is all the while fused into Séverac’s own
special brand of colour, landscape portraiture and rhythmic
energy.
Given the above, and acknowledging competing performances, this
disc would serve as a most enjoyable introduction to the Séverac’s
music.
Jonathan Woolf
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François-Michel Rignol (piano)