Révolution

Album review

Freeze frame. On the sleeve of his album Révolution, David Kadouch is seated at the piano, hands in the air, looking like a shadow puppet. He is trying to stop time. His project here – surprising from an artist who is not yet 35 – is modelled on Annie Ernaux and her tale The Years. It's about trying to gather together a collection of important moments, in this case musical, and in so doing, to take his own place in history. The works chosen by David Kadouch for this concept album are linked to spectacular collective events, but also to individual consequences. Alongside from Beethoven's famous Sonata No.26, Op.81a, called "Les Adieux", more jaunty and ornamented than powerful and angry; Étude révolutionnaire, Op.10 No.12 by Chopin, we find Dussek's Sufferings of the Queen of France that Dussek composed two months after the execution of Marie-Antoinette of whom he had fond memories. The pretext for a series of contrasting pages in the form of a mini-drama without words, this work testifies to Dussek's attachment to the Queen through a genuine and sincere music with no effect whatsoever where one is almost surprised in certain passages that the subject is treated with more gentleness than tragedy and violence. The programme continues with Sonata 1.X.1905 by Janacek, and Debussy's Les Soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon (a piece recently found behind a Comtoise clock to be rediscovered) and Feux d’artifice and finally Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues by Rzewski, an infernal toccata that bends towards the blues. True to the spirit of the works he performs, David Kadouch approaches this surprising program with eloquence. © Elsa Siffert/Qobuz

Details of the original recording : Recorded December 2018, Flagey, Bruxelles (Belgium)