Essais / Volume 2

Album review

Finally, it’s more than just his secret garden. It’s some kind of necessity, his oxygen. And as without oxygen, you know how it goes… In short, the piano/bass/drums trio is viscerally anchored in Pierre de Bethmann’s DNA. Here’s further proof with the second volume of his Essais (Essays), two years and many concerts after the release of the first, in 2015. With double bass player Sylvain Romano and drummer Tony Rabeson, the former Prysm explores once again various musical traditions, submitting each one of them to choose different arrangement options. The height of delicacy and mastered groove, Essais / Volume 2 gathers the revisiting of pieces drawn from 1707 to 1985, written by various composers born on the two sides of the Atlantic. Here, Eric Dolphy crosses paths with Ravel as well with Alain Goraguer, the Chant des partisans, Handel, George Shearing and even Laurent Voulzy. You end up thinking that Pierre de Bethmann’s piano sounds more and more beautiful. The rhythmic radicalness of the Prysm era seems like a distant memory when listening to his interpretation of a classic like I Remember You. Different times, different music, different necessities. The science of swing and sound reaches here true summits of refinement, like an enchanted parenthesis to stop the vain celerity of the era. And thus it is essential… © MZ/Qobuz