La Veillée imaginaire

Imagination to power

[…] It is from all this that François Lazarevitch and his Musicians of Saint-Julien draw inspiration, for an “Imaginary Vigil” created and performed with great care: an assortment of songs, dances and other sound punctuations of life in the fields. A few literary scraps borrowed from the regionalist pens of Pourrat and Vincenot are interspersed and set the scene, sprinkled in a warm murmur by Nita Klein, like a sand seller wonderfully suggesting “listening and dreaming favored by the darkness”. All you have to do is let yourself be guided, then surprise. Depending on the nature of what is sung, we will be dealing with a “trad” male voice (Bien le bonoir, charmette brune) or feminine (Tant que j’had des noisettes), and indeed with a real melodist – the excellent Françoise Masset who distills melancholy like no other (see the wonders “noted” by Bizet, Holmès and Viardot). The hurdy-gurdy, the flute, the violin, the bagpipes are not confined to the traditional repertoire, which they cleverly place alongside certain more learned transfers; they also appear in the middle of a melody by Ravel or Chabrier. Their colors then tastefully blend with those of Françoise Tillard’s old Erard, weaving for example a truly beautiful accompaniment for Canteloube’s Brezairola. An enchantment…

This astonishing record sounds as if we were in the music room of a provincial bourgeois home: inside, an educated soprano (Françoise Masset), an old Erard piano (Françoise Tillard), a flautist (François Lazarevitch) . Outside, a choir of peasant women with bagpipes and bawlers (Lazarevitch again), hurdy-gurdy (Anne-Lise Foy) and fiddlers (Basile Brémaud). Exchanging, mingling in an unexpected but well-understood way, these musicians (and an intervening speaker) reconstruct the “bridge” between the “classical” treatment of popular songs and their original framework. The result, seemingly paradoxical, is of exciting freshness and flavor.

This carefully presented publication recalls an old country tradition, evenings, moments of meetings and exchanges “between supper and bedtime”. What emerges from this hour of music, to be savored of course in the evening and in one go, is a singular charm and an emotion unlike any other aroused by the interventions of the bagpipes but also by the unforgettable voice of Françoise Masset. All of this sounds authentic, the tonal alloys making listening to this little marvel full of poetry and melancholy particularly delectable.