Déodat de Séverac: La vasque aux colombes

Album review

Pianist Laurent Martin has made a personal speciality (amongst many other activities) of rediscovering overlooked French composers, left by the wayside of the mainstream repertoire. And so he has performed Castillon, Dubois, La Tombelle and Gouvy. He was one of the main architects of the resurrection of George Onslow, the composer Mel Bonis and Charles Valentin Alkan. Here he is getting into the, sadly rarely-performed, repertoire of Déodat de Séverac, who has something of the air of a nice regional Toulouse composer – but who's anything but! Thus we have Cerdaña – or Cerdagne in French, as the territory is shared equally between Spain and France – from 1910 hasn't anything of Toulouse about it, any more than does En vacances whose first part dates from 1911, the second and final from 1921, which is incomplete, but Blanche Selva rounds off a few of the missing touches on the final number, La vasque aux colombes. Yes, De Séverac complained, while studying in Paris, of the crushing pyramid-system that made Paris the centre of French musical life, while the rest of the country remained a backwater: but musicians like him were soon able to breathe life into the sounds of the other parts of the country - he himself would explore Languedoc. Note also that far from falling under the centripetal force of Debussy, he would prefer to turn towards Satie, and the clarity and (false) naivety of his language. © SM/Qobuz