Martial SOLAL (b.1927)
Works for Piano and Two Pianos
Voyage en Anatolie (2011) [5:37]
Jazz Preludes (c. 1990) [15:05]
Exercice de Concert (co-written with Pascal Wetzel) (2011, based on an improvisation of 1994)
11 Études (1999) [20:46]
Ballade for two Pianos (1985)
Eric Ferrand-N’Kaoua (piano)
Martial Solal (second piano)
rec. Auditorium Marcel Landowski, Paris, 2011.
GRAND PIANO GP697 [53:47]
Martial Solal has claims to be regarded as the greatest of
all European jazz pianists and is surely in what one might call the premier
league of pianists in the history of jazz. Born in Algiers of French parents,
his early piano lessons came from his mother who, as herself an opera singer,
doubtless laid the foundations of that knowledge of the classical piano repertoire
which is often evident in Solal’s jazz work. While he never goes in
for Jacques-Loussier-like ‘jazzing’ of the classics (or even the
creating of fully-fledged jazz improvisations on classical themes, as in Richie
Beirach’s Round About Monteverdi or Giorgio Gaslini’s
Schumnn Reflections), allusions to, and quotations from Bach, Chopin,
Grieg and others can often be heard in Solal’s improvisations. His initial
fascination with jazz grew from what he could hear on the radio during his
upbringing in Algiers. He moved to Paris in 1950 and soon established himself
on the thriving jazz scene there. He early demonstrated his stylistic range
and facility, proving himself equally at home working with older musicians
such as Django Reinhardt or Sidney Bechet, on the one hand, or with bop-influenced
Americans such as Lucky Thompson, Kenny Clarke and Don Byas, on the other.
Over his long career since then he has worked and recorded extensively, as
a solo pianist, in duets with the great alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, with
the avant-garde German pianist Joachim Kühn, and with violinist Didier Lockwood
and trumpeter Dave Douglas, as well as in piano trios with bassists including
Gary Peacock, Marc Johnson and Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and drummers
such as Daniel Humair, Paul Motian and Peter Erskine, as well as organizing,
leading and recording with a Big Band. He has also written some twenty film
scores (including that for Jean-Luc Godard’s first film À
bout de souffle and Orson Welles’ The Trial). The range
of his work, his command of almost every aspect of the jazz keyboard language,
is astonishing – and yet he always remains very much an individual,
with his own musical voice. During his long and productive career he has also
found time to write a number of ‘classical’ works, including a
concerto for piano and strings and compositions for bassoon and for prepared
harpsichord. Now here is what I believe to be the first recording devoted
to his ‘classical’ compositions for piano(s).
The jazz influence is never too far away, though Eric Ferrand - N’Kaoua’s
approach is very much that of a classical pianist. He obviously understands
and admires Solal’s music, but the effect is often rather over-studied.
He doesn’t swing naturally – unlike the composer.
The first work on this CD, ‘Voyage en Anatolie’, belongs very
much in the jazz arena, most notably in terms of the material it works with.
The clue in the title which has nothing to do with Asia Minor. French jazz
musicians sometimes refer to a particular set of chord changes, used as a
basis for improvisation, as an ‘Anatole’. I remember someone suggesting
to me, in a jazz club in Chambéry, that this was because French medical students
used to refer to anatomical skeletons as ‘Anatoles’, the analogy
then being that the chord sequence provided the ‘skeleton’ for
improvisation. I don’t know whether that is true or not, but an ‘Anatole’
in French jazz is the name given to the 32–bar chord progression Anglophone
jazz musicians refer to as the ‘rhythm changes’ (the changes of
Gershwin’s ‘I Got Rhythm'). These changes have provided
the ‘skeleton’ for many jazz compositions (as well as for countless
jazz improvisations), such as Thelonious Monk’s ‘Rhythm-a-Ning’,
Dizzy Gillespie’s ‘Salt Peanuts’, Charlie Parker’s
‘Dexterity’, Sonny Rollins’ ‘Oleo’ and Count
Basie’s ‘Jumpin’ at the Woodside’. What Solal has
done is to write a set of 13 variations (which he may well have originally
improvised) on this chord sequence. The variations are played without a break.
Eric Ferrand- N’Kaoua plays them with accuracy and a certain flair,
but for those who know Solal’s own playing ‘something’ is
missing.
Of the other pieces in the programme the most interesting are perhaps the
‘Jazz Preludes’ and the ‘Ballade for 2 Pianos’. The
7 Preludes are identified only by numbers and are essentially abstract in
nature. All of them are brief, the shortest under two minutes in length, the
longest almost three and a quarter minutes. Each is quirkily inventive and
makes a self-contained and coherent whole, but is also pregnant with developmental
possibilities (aptly enough, for pieces designated as preludes). In contrast,
the 11 Études are more fully developed and less abstract (as indicated by
titles such as ‘La Nonchalante’, ‘La Jazzifiante’,
La Joyeuse’, ‘La Trépidante’ and ‘La Lancinante’.
In the ‘Ballade for 2 Pianos’ Martial Solal himself plays the
first piano part, partnered by Ferrand-N’Kaoua, in a piece originally
written for Katia and Marielle Labèque and recorded by them on their 1991
CD Love of Colours. There’s a greater sense of excitement here
than in the solo piano pieces on the disc – in part because of the sheer
vivacity of Solal’s playing, although on balance I am inclined to prefer
the recording by the Labèque sisters, in which there is a greater sense of
complementary dialogue between the two keyboards.
All in all this is an enjoyable, if not especially memorable or essential
album, which will be valued most by those who already admire
Solal the jazz pianist. I expect to listen to it again quite a lot in the
future.
Glyn Pursglove
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