Lost Paradises

Album review

It's a revelation. Not one of those spectacular ones that leave you stunned like after a boxing match. No, Jodyline Gallavardin is not the type of person to go overboard, preferring to rely on her airy phrasing, her sense of resonance and her skilful understanding of the scores of Cowell, Sibelius, Granados and all the other composers in this programme. After all, her first album, Lost Paradise, was "intended as a refuge from the hustle and bustle of our times, from the pervasive noise." Her recital invites contemplation and relaxation. If there is a revelation then, it is gentle, bewitching, almost hypnotic. The pianist, who graduated in 2015 from the CNSMD in Lyon, has very quickly woven her web in the piano forest and emerges, charming and enchanting, on the French, Italian and Swedish stages.

There is a certain audacity in opening this disc with the millennial, even archaic, outbursts of Cowell's Three Irish Legends. It takes a solid coherence of style to then branch off into Sibelius' sylvan walks (Five Trees Op.75) with such naturalness. Jodyline Gallavardin, a mark of immense talent, manages to bring together the worlds of seven composers, who are in fact very different, while maintaining a strong guideline, that of suspended time and dreamlike meditation. Under her fingers, Sibelius' pieces conjure up a magnificent pastoral universe of trees, streams and mossy rocks, while Amy Beach's Hermit Trush becomes a free and dreamy walk. As for Schubert, he has never been so romantic and languid. The pages of Granados, Séverac and Ravel that follow benefit from the same choice of treatment. Gallavardin combines the intelligent construction of the programme with a total dedication to the emotion contained in each of the works she performs here with the utmost sensitivity to offer us an album that has certainly not stolen its Qobuzissime. © Pierre Lamy/Qobuz