Sep 1st 2016

“Just Call Her ‘Tailleferre’ ”

by Michael Johnson

Michael Johnson is a music critic with particular interest in piano. 

Johnson worked as a reporter and editor in New York, Moscow, Paris and London over his journalism career. He covered European technology for Business Week for five years, and served nine years as chief editor of International Management magazine and was chief editor of the French technology weekly 01 Informatique. He also spent four years as Moscow correspondent of The Associated Press. He is the author of five books.

Michael Johnson is based in Bordeaux. Besides English and French he is also fluent in Russian.

You can order Michael Johnson's most recent book, a bilingual book, French and English, with drawings by Johnson:

“Portraitures and caricatures:  Conductors, Pianist, Composers”

 here.

We have come a long way since the day when female composers suffered denigration for their supposed inability to compose anything of substance. That battle is over, and the women have won. There is no longer any such thing as “women’s music,” if there ever was.

Male music-lovers once imagined they heard a more satisfying growl and grumph from the men composers and just a lot of tinkling and charm from the women. Going by the logic of this old prejudice, it’s fair to ask whether Jean-Philippe Rameau was female, whether Erik Satie (listen to his Gymnopédies) was actually a girl, and whether Jean Françaix was a lady. Among the moderns, much of Morton Feldman’s music, by these assumptions, is sexually ambiguous – contrary to his legendary love life.

Sketch of Germaine Tailleferre by the author, Michael Johnson

My point? Lots of men have written charming, dainty melodies too, and any honest listener, blindfolded, would have difficulty separating the boys from the girls.

My mind wandered into these questions as I studied the background of a neglected composer – Germaine Tailleferre, an alluring French woman who fought the stigma of belonging to the weaker sex all her life. For more than 70 years of prolific composing, and through three marriages, she produced memorable music for opera and ballet, wrote piano concertos, symphonic works, solo piano pieces, music for small ensembles and some 40 cinema sound tracks. Moving easily among the Montparnasse set of writers, composers, artists and sculptors, the Paris culturati of her era revered her as the “reigning Princess of music,” writes music historian Robert Shapiro. She was still composing when she died in Paris in 1983 at the age of 91.

The only woman in the influential 1920s group of French composers known as “Les Six,” Tailleferre was right to complain that being branded a “woman composer” was degrading. Even her best friend Darius Milhaud, also in the group, tried to praise her but couldn’t resist emphasizing the “scent” of her music. And another close friend, Jean Cocteau, professed to admire her, but likened her work to the wispy works of the popular watercolorist Marie Laurencin.

And yet in this performance of her diptych for two pianos, “Jeux de plein air” (Outdoor Games), Tailleferre’s writing is vigorous, bold and original, dissonant and exploratory, quite something for a 25-year-old woman in 1917. When Satie first heard the work he was struck by her originality, and declared, “She is my daughter.” Here the piece is illustrated with Laurencin’s watercolors:


Tailleferre struggled to be considered asexual in musical terms, asking to be called simply “a composer,” not a “woman composer.” Even today her granddaughter Elvie de Rudder, still teaching music in a Paris lycée, bristles at those who refer to her as “Germaine.” Nobody calls Milhaud “Darius” or Poulenc “Francis,” she says. “So just call her ‘Tailleferre’.” Easy first-name usage can connote condescension, especially in protocol-sensitive France.

With hindsight, we can conclude that Tailleferre was cheated out of her rightful place in the legacy of Les Six. The other more prominent members – Poulenc, Milhaud and Arthur Honegger – are routinely credited as originators of a modern French School of composing. No less an authority on contemporary music as the late Joseph Machlis maintained in his book Introduction to Contemporary Music that Tailleferre and another member of the group, Louis Durey, “dropped from sight” after a brush with fame in the 1920s. Not true. They continued making an impact of their own choosing and at their own pace.

Tailleferre’s natural modesty didn’t help her career. She undervalued herself in part because of the patriarchal culture of early 20th century Europe. Playing her submissive role to the hilt, she told an interviewer she had no grand pretensions about her oeuvre. “It’s not great music, I know, but it’s gay, light hearted music which is sometimes compared with that of the ‘petits maîtres’ of the 18th century. And that makes me very proud.’’ She added, “I write music because it amuses me.” You can almost hear her tiny voice apologizing for what she has done.

Despite the old negative assumptions, Tailleferre’s music is being resurrected today by recording companies, orchestral programmers and broadcasters, mainly in France and Britain. As her profile rises, old scores, sometimes tattered, paper-clipped and pasted together, have been unearthed from libraries and played in public venues. BBC Wales is planning a production of her ballet “Le Marchand d’Oiseaux” (The Bird-Seller). “There is very definitely a revival under way,” says Paul Wehage, an American musicologist and music publisher based in France. As her work is being dusted off, “people are starting to get another idea of her – someone born to compose music.” She is the “most important French woman composer of all time,” he tells me.

The revival is growing among the young as well. French teenagers today learn about her through the syllabus for the general baccalauréat degree which has recently added her story to the requirements. The students’ initial reaction, however, tends toward hilarity, for her family name was originally “Taillefesse,” a term of disputed origin that evokes cutting or shaping of the derrière. She changed her name, but only to spite her father, Arthur, who refused to support her music studies. He considered music an unworthy pursuit and saw the Paris Conservatoire, where she was headed, as a den of vice. “A woman studying music was no better than her becoming a streetwalker,” writes musicologist Shapiro in his historical account Les Six: The French composers and their mentors Jean Cocteau and Erik Satie. Shapiro elaborates:

"She never forgave her father for his inflexible attitude to her artistic gifts – music and the visual arts. Embittered, she is said to have regarded his demise (in 1916), as something of a relief."

Critics past and present have disagreed over her importance as a composer, for she kept up a flow of miniatures and brief pieces, some intentionally dumbed down for beginners at the keyboard, while simultaneously producing monumental works. One critic in 1925 wrote in the newspaper Le Monde that parts of her piano concerto were “impregnated with a dreamy poetry,” typical of a woman. And in London in 1935 her Ouverture was belittled as “slight, gay and perverse”. Another French critic took an upbeat approach to her “Ballade,” definitely new and fresh for 1920, praising its “spiritual swagger”. In this clip, there is no hint of the gender handicap:


A close reading of her oeuvre reveals a taste for the avant garde, with polytonality and atonality applied to great effect. Her 1964 “Partita for two Pianos and Percussion ‘Homage à Rameau’,” inspired by Béla Bartok’s piece of similar name, has been favorably compared to Milhaud’s percussion pieces and is perhaps more daring than anything the other five attempted.

Tailleferre was not alone as a woman composer in a man’s world. Specialists point as far back as the 12th century to Hildegard von Bingen as the first major woman composer, followed by hundreds of others who were marginalized by powerful men. Von Bingen’s soaring choral works still sell to CD collectors, and newcomers may be surprised how her “Canticles of Ecstasy” can stir emotions with masterly handling of dynamics and choral harmony:


In more modern times, Clara Schumann and dozens of others fought for recognition, Clara having to fend off her own husband, Robert Schumann, for freedom to make a career. The talented Mélanie Hélène Bonis, a prolific French composer in the early 1900s of vigorous repertoire, and a precursor of Tailleferre, had to adopt the pseudonym “Mel Bonis” to disguise her femininity. Contemporary composers who have gained recognition on their merits include Sofia Gubaidulina, Nadia Boulanger and her sister Lili, Cécile Chaminade, Elena Fursova, Lorin Alexander, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros, Linda Catlin Smith and Hildegard Westerkamp, among a long list of others.

Tailleferre fits naturally into this cohort. This summer, in my extensive reading and listening to the music of Les Six, I kept returning to Tailleferre as the most interesting member of the group. She stands out for her original harmonies and rhythms and her stubborn individuality. I also like her self-effacing musical modesty. In this mature solo piano work from 1946, “Rêverie” (Dream) she displays a harmonic range and sensitivity equal to Debussy:


Another attraction of the Tailleferre story is her association with a virtual pantheon of great creative minds of her era. She was a close friend of Maurice Ravel and Erik Satie, a favorite of Jean Cocteau and an acquaintance of Aaron Copland, who lavished praise on her for her violin concerto. Also in this hyper-creative crowd were Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Amadeo Modigliani, Russian-born cubist Osip Zadkine, André Gide, Guillaume Appolinaire, George Balanchine and Sergei Diaghilev, among others. She once said Picasso gave her the “best lesson in composition” she ever received when he told her to “constantly renew yourself; avoid using the recipes that you have already found.” This counsel she took to heart.

Les Six French composers were in fact a loose club of friends more than a school of composition. Three of them were born in 1892 and studied together at the Conservatoire. Les Six began as Les Nouveaux Jeunes, a group led by Satie and Cocteau. Cocteau’s manifesto, “Le coq et l’arlequin” (The Rooster and the Clown), triggered public interest in the group, and it was nicknamed “Les Six Français” in the Comoedia magazine pieces of music writer Henri Collet. Tailleferre was welcomed aboard the group as a major talent in 1918 upon publication of her first string quartet.

During the early 1920s, Tailleferre produced some of her major works, including her “First Piano Concerto,” “The Harp Concertino,” and the ballet music for “La nouvelle Cythère” that was commissioned for the Ballets Russes by Diaghilev. The 1930s saw publication of “Concerto for Two Pianos, Choeurs, Saxophones and Orchestra,” the violin concerto and “La cantate de Narcisse” that she worked on in association with the esteemed French poet Paul Valéry. And her “Ballade pour Piano et Orchestre” provides perhaps the truest glimpse of her broad capabilities, combining her feel for orchestral color with piano virtuosity:


Tailleferre is credited with one of the first attempts to merge contemporary music with classical structures in her “Sonate pour piano et violon No. 1,” premiered in 1922 by the great pianist Alfred Cortot and popular violinist Jacques Thibaud. One French critic praised it for being “constantly captivating in its fluidity, unexpected in its novelty, spontaneous in its freshness …” Her neo-classicism, a trend that brought restraint and clarity back to composition after a period of romanticism, showed the way for later works by Stravinsky and Poulenc.

The name attached to Les Six came from a comparison of the group with “The Five,” or the “Mighty Handful” of Russia, comprising Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, César Cui, Mily Balakirev and Alexander Borodin. Both groups turned inward to develop a national identity in their compositions, free of derivation from the great 19th century Teutonic repertoire which heretofore had dominated.

As Les Six joined the creative cauldron in Paris of the 1920s, their compositions were welcomed as an alternative to works of the dreaded Germans, whose culture was rejected by the French after years of militarism, invasion and mechanized war-making. All of Richard Wagner’s compositions were banished from concert halls for years. Les Six also sought to eradicate the “exalted or sterile” influences of the previous French generation typified by the romanticism of Vincent d’Indy and César Franck. They considered Debussy “dead” and felt Ravel was “arty” and “excessively refined.” American critic Harold Schonberg wrote in his Lives of the Great Composers that they felt “fresh blood was needed,” and the heavy seriousness of classical music was at a dead end. “One had to thumb one’s nose at tradition,” he wrote. “To be lowbrow was to be highbrow.”

Cocteau, the group’s intellectual godfather, urged them on, deriding French-German and French-Russian compositions as “bastard forms” of music. He wanted his friends to produce “French music from France.” If their output sometimes sounds overly accessible today, the public popularity was intentional. Their aim was to be “comprehended by nearly anyone and even appreciated by those who habitually dined on lofty fare,” Shapiro wrote.

Ever the adventurous composer, Tailleferre moved to New York in 1925 to “breathe new life” into her career, writes Shapiro. Packing a load of scores in her luggage, she traveled to Philadelphia and convinced Leopold Stokowski to premiere her “Concerto for Piano and Orchestra” featuring the great Alfred Cortot on piano. Later during the same visit she performed the concerto with the New York Philharmonic Society under Willem Mengleberg the same night that Cortot was playing it in Boston under Serge Koussevitzky. Her newfound celebrity in the United States led to some twenty-five performances of the concerto.

Koussevitzky adopted her as one of his favorite discoveries, offering the American premiere of her “Jeux de plein air” in Boston to great acclaim. Yet the Boston Globe however still hailed her as a “girl composer”: “not in the whole history of music can one encounter more than half a dozen women who have written works taken seriously by musicians,” the critic declared.

Tailleferre’s American adventure seemed to be advancing like a fairy tale when she fell for New Yorker magazine artist Ralph Barton. Within weeks, she had become his fourth wife. After the euphoria wore off she realized Barton, diagnosed as depressive, thought little of her compositions and he discouraged her from continuing. The late Georges Hacquard, in his book Germaine Tailleferre: La dame des Six, describes the Barton salon as a lively New York cultural center, welcoming Charlie Chaplin, Sinclair Lewis, Paul Robeson, Somerset Maugham and other leading lights as intimate friends. At one soirée she played a four-hand transcription with George Gershwin of his “Rhapsody in Blue.”

Barton, always footloose and in search of a convivial environment, took her back to France where he hoped they would both find peace. But his psychological disorder worsened, and the marriage disintegrated. They divorced in 1929. He returned to New York, unable to restart his career. In 1931, at age 39, he committed suicide, leaving an explanatory note. An excerpt provides the essential:

"I have had few real difficulties . . . I have had, on the contrary, an exceptionally glamorous life–as lives go. But, since my childhood, I have suffered with a melancholia which, in the past 5 years, has begun to show definite symptoms of manic-depressive insanity."

Tailleferre’s “Six Chansons Françaises” reflected some of problems that women face in fading relationships: her song titles include “No, fidelity” and “My husband defamed me”:


Her own love life continued to thrive, however, leading to the birth out of wedlock of a daughter, Francoise, in 1931. The following year she married the father, Jean Lageat, a French lawyer. Their marriage lasted 24 years, a record for her, but also ended in divorce 1955. Later the same year, Françoise gave birth to a daughter, Elivre, the only grandchild of Germaine and the only surviving family member today.

World War II meant the first major dislocation for her since achieving international stature. With the exodus from Paris, she fled first to Grasse in the south, eventually allowing her home to be occupied as a German communications center. A cache of her manuscripts vanished, probably “to keep the fireplace alight for warmth,” writes Shapiro. Tailleferre escaped across Spain to Portugal and landed in America where she lived near Swarthmore for two years. Her teen-aged daughter Françoise studied harpsichord with Wanda Landowska at Swarthmore. In this period, her own productivity suffered, as did her personal life. She never learned enough English to converse comfortably with her American neighbors.
 
She and her daughter returned to France in 1946, where she resumed composing orchestral works, ballet and chamber music. Most of these pieces were published posthumously and many are still being rediscovered today. In this interesting four-hand piano piece Suite Burlesque, composed just three years before her death, shows her resilience and high spirits surviving late in life. Her second movement, “Pimpante” (smart, chic) reflects her own attachment to living happily no matter what.


Stories of Les Six enriched salon life in Paris for decades after they effectively disbanded at the end of the 1920s. Hacquard summed them up with this observation from the 1950s:

"With Francis Poulenc and Jean Françaix, she represented the very French idea of a kind of softness in art, accessible, charming, with a discreet elegance and a sense of good company. No one after thirty years had forgotten the Group of Six. Journalists speaking of Germaine always linked her to the famous group. The label of Les Six stuck to her, and to all evidence she didn’t mind a bit."

Toward the end of her life Tailleferre worked as an accompanist at a private school until arthritis halted her playing. Her last work was on “Concerto de la fidelité pour coloratura soprano et orchestre” which was premiered before her death at the Paris Opera. She died in 1983, having lived her life, as Shapiro concluded, “courageously and adventurously.”

Germaine Tailleferre helped bring a French touch to the nation’s musical language that freed it from Germanic tradition. She and her five friends, bolstered by their intellectual godfather Jean Cocteau and the fearless eccentric composer/writer mentor Erik Satie, never lost their thirst for the new. It was a golden age of French composition, the legacy of which is with us in the concert repertoire worldwide.

This article first appeared on www.openlettersmonthly.com.

 


This article is brought to you by the author who owns the copyright to the text.

Should you want to support the author’s creative work you can use the PayPal “Donate” button below.

Your donation is a transaction between you and the author. The proceeds go directly to the author’s PayPal account in full less PayPal’s commission.

Facts & Arts neither receives information about you, nor of your donation, nor does Facts & Arts receive a commission.

Facts & Arts does not pay the author, nor takes paid by the author, for the posting of the author's material on Facts & Arts. Facts & Arts finances its operations by selling advertising space.

 

 

Browse articles by author

More Music Reviews

Nov 13th 2024
EXTRACT: "It was British composer Michael Nyman who in the late 1960s coined the term musical minimalism, the application of limited materials borrowed from ideas of modern architecture, literature and improvisational performance. Today, thanks to John Cage, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, La Monte Young and others, musical minimalism has found a secure place among composers and performers. Defining it is a slippery exercise, however, as it means different styles to different musicians. I nominate Cage as the ultimate simplifier."
Oct 7th 2024
EXTRACT: "Oppens stands apart from today’s keyboard virtuosos by her four decades of discovering and commissioning new works. These contributions to the repertory ensure her a permanent place in pantheon of modern music. But she is also recognized as a powerful performer who tackles the thorniest of new pieces. As she said in our interview, she remembers hearing the difficult works of Julian Hemphill for the first time and thinking 'This is for me!'  Composers who have been commissioned by her or who have written works for her include such leading lights as Frederic Rzewski, William Bolcom, Elliott Carter, John Corigliano, John Harbison, Julius Hemphill, Peter Lieberson, Conlon Nancarrow, Tobias Picker, Christian Wolff  and Charles Wuorinen.”
Jul 5th 2024
EXTRACTS: "The Conservative Party, which was finally pronounced dead from multiple unnatural causes on July 5 2024, was born in 1832." ---- " Strange as it might now appear, the party was once very popular and respected, even by its opponents. Educated at Eton and Oxford, it established a reputation for governing competence which allowed it to bounce back from serious setbacks, notably the landslide Labour victory of 1945." ---- "The end of the cold war debunked the notion that the Conservatives had restored Britain’s former global status. Unwilling to acknowledge their country’s subservience to the United States, the party’s dominant nationalist faction could now only rage against reality by identifying the European Union, and post-war immigration, as the twin culprits for the depletion of British political influence and cultural uniformity." ---- "The Conservative party has presented a sorry spectacle to sympathetic observers in its undignified post-Brexit dying days. It became prone to hallucinations, first believing that Boris Johnson could be a successful prime minister then replacing him with Liz Truss."
Jun 17th 2024
EXTRACT: "Question: Isn’t piano study a big problem in the USA, with all the electronic games and distractions from music lessons? ---- Answer: The problem is also in Europe. We have lost a lot of quality, in terms of knowledge behind the music. The schools do not make the transmission from the composers to us. We owe that to the composers. And it’s very sad because now we focus on goals and competition, and competition does not go well with art.
Jun 9th 2024
EXTRACT: "Question: Isn’t it true, as the musicologist Kyle Gann says, that one cannot judge immediately what’s good or bad in contemporary music? We must wait 20 years. Answer: Yes, look at Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring”. It caused a scandal. It was booed and rejected by everyone. Now it’s standard in the concert hall. In jazz, I think it’s not 20 years, but more like 50 years before we know what has worked or not. One has to step back and reflect on whether we have brought something new."
Mar 9th 2024
EXTRACT: "In a way, every experience you have, every book you read, every movie you watch, every place you visit, every encounter you have, every moment you spend with friends or family, they leave a mark on you and direct you indirectly and therefore leave their mark on your playing.", says Boris Giltburg in Michael Johnson's and Frances Wilson's new book 'Lifting the Lid: Interviews with Concert Pianists', now available on Amazon.
Feb 27th 2024
EXTRACT: "Question: Some pianophiles say the CD could be useful for meditation, therapy or even healing. ---- Answer: Indeed, that is the kind of feedback I am getting. But this music doesn’t belong to me any more, therefore I cannot label it with any purpose. It has taken on a life of its own. I can’t say how it affects the life of other people. Will it be therapeutic or will it have another effect? Time will tell."
Dec 4th 2023
EXTRACT: "Seated in a quiet corner of a Bordeaux hotel last week, we had an interview – more a casual chat – about her life, her Soviet Russian origins, her career, her future."
Nov 27th 2023
EXTRACT: "Schiff creates an atmosphere that we 'seniors' remember from the old days. No clowning, no bouncing on the bench, no outlandish clothing. He dresses in a black smock, black trousers, black shoes, topped off with a mane of pure white hair. His manners, his grateful bowing, are très Old Europe. ---- Schiff keeps control of his two hours onstage. He believes that dignity goes with the great music on the program and he scarcely moves as he plays."
Nov 19th 2023
EXTRACT: "  Boston-based guitarist, band leader and composer Phil Sargent is not about churning out endless CDs. In fact his ten-year recording gap, just ended, had his fans wondering where he was. But in New York and Boston, he tells me, he has never stopped working with other groups while composing and actively teaching young and mature talent. Although not always visible, he seems to be a confirmed workaholic, even practicing five hours a day. Yes, virtuosos also need to practice. ---- And now he is back. His new CD, 'Sons'....."
Nov 19th 2023
EXTRACT: "There is a renewed fascination with the memory-stimulating and healing powers of music. This resurgence can primarily be attributed to recent breakthroughs in neuroscientific research, which have substantiated music’s therapeutic properties such as emotional regulation and brain re-engagement. This has led to a growing integration of music therapy with conventional mental health treatments."
Sep 28th 2023
EXTRACT: "British psychotherapist, Michael Lawson, who has worked with several prodigies and former prodigies, calculates there may be as many as 200,000 piano prodigies active in the world today. “In a sense, they are not that rare,” he says in our interview below. Lawson is author of International Acclaim: The Steinfeld Legacy a new novel of the great pianists of the 19th and early 20th centuries in which the prodigy phenomenon is described in some detail."
Sep 17th 2023
EXTRACT: "Like so many stories about relationships told over an extended time, Past Lives uncovers the twists and turns, the “what ifs” and the manifold choices that lead to two people wondering whether they were meant to be together."
Sep 12th 2023
EXTRACT: " OrpheusPDX, a new company founded by Christopher Mattaliano in Portland, Oregon, concluded its second season with a brilliant and thought-provoking production of Nico Muhly’s “Dark Sisters,” at Lincoln Hall (August 24), exploring and exposing relationships in a polygamous sect and the courage of one sister-wife to leave it. With Stephen Karam’s libretto inspired by memoirs of women who have left the FLDS (Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints) and the 2008 raid of the YFZ Ranch by the FBI, “Dark Sisters” was delivered with spot-on directing by Kristine McIntyre and riveting performances by an exceptional cast."
Aug 30th 2023
EXTRACT: "Wagner’s operas are well known to be budget busters, and lack of funds is probably one of the main reasons that Seattle Opera has not mounted the Ring Cycle in since 2013. After Speight Jenkins retired from his post as General Director in 2014, the company delivered The Flying Dutchman (2016) and Tristan und Isolde (2022), the latter under its current General Director, Christina Scheppelmann. Now starting its 60th season, Seattle Opera celebrated with Das Rheingold, but that can be seen as a bittersweet moment since Scheppelmann is moving on to take over La Monnaie/De Munt in Brussels at the end of the 2023-2024 season."
Jul 6th 2023
EXTRACT: " More than a hundred recordings have been made of his suite of 14 light pieces he called “The Carnival of the Animals”, and a range of his other works remain in the standard repertoire."
Jun 18th 2023
EXTRACT: "Conservatories and university music departments are filling up with fee-paying Asians as their parents pressure them to succeed in the West. Piano competitions around the world, now numbering about 800, are open to this new wave of Asian players. They are winning top prizes and they are building careers in Europe and the U.S.  Too often, according to some teachers, young Americans prefer computer games, the latest movies, rock bands, sports, or other less-demanding activities. The Asians are happy to fill the vacuum."
May 30th 2023
EXTRACT: "Three of Europe’s longtime leaders in contemporary jazz, now in their senior years, have just launched a CD of twelve  pieces that shows what a lifetime of sharing ideas in music can really produce." “New Stories” (Frémeaux et Associés) by the French trio of pianist and composer Hervé Sellin, bassist Jean-Paul Celea and drummer Daniel Humair is remarkable for improvisations so synchronized that the listener can feel the music come together from three angles in real time. The tracks were mostly composed or improvised by Sellin."
Mar 28th 2023
EXTRACT: "The young ex-dancer from Italy first burst upon the piano scene three years ago with 20 of her hand-picked Scarlatti sonatas. Now comes her second CD (Academy Classical Music) even more original and powerful, performing six of Baldassare Galuppi’s 18th century sonatas. Margherita Torretta‘s early training as a dancer gives her playing a swaying, graceful air while she maintains Alberti bass for control of the rhythm, momentum and especially continuity. Her ornamentation is boosted with some of her own improvisations, producing a fresher feel. It’s a magic combination."
Mar 24th 2023
EXTRACT: "Driven by a sense of mission and determination over several years, French pianist Lydia Jardon has completed a rare cycle of nine piano sonatas by Nikolai Miaskovsky. Her new CD  of numbers 6, 7 and 8 completes the task and offers a particularly rich sample of Russian experience in the worst of times. Miaskovsky may be only vaguely remembered today but he was a leader in the Soviet music world until the end of World War II. He left a wide range of engaging sonatas that have been brought back to life by Mme. Jardon on her own label AR Ré-Sé (AR 2022-1)."