Captivating and delightful. That’s how I’d sum up the music of composer Apolline Jesupret, one of the most interesting voices of the young French-speaking musical generation (she’s Belgian). Jesupret is very much of her time: she constructs sonic panoramas with tangible forms and consonances, designed with renewed attention to accessible discourse and comprehensible dramatic prose, while taking care to integrate onto this solid framework protrusions inherited from the abstract design of the contemporary avant-garde of the second half of the 20th century. The chromatic tonal structure is used as a springboard for the creation of paintings with an optimistic solarity, but often crossed by shimmering, chamoir-like fluctuations, and also some blackness. Rhythms are positive, tending towards pulsation. In this way, Jesupret is a sort of child of French spectralism and American minimalism (I’m thinking of Michael Torke).
It also crosses the limits long imposed by the rigorist musical dictatorship of the post-war era (World War II, kids!). Thus, the jingles of McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Google are summoned with delicious irony in “OK Gaïa”, a play on words with “OK Google” that reminds us that we are asking more and more (too much) of our planet… Also: a quirky reinterpretation of Brel’s Valse à mille temps, where it’s the accompanying musicians who accelerate diabolically while the singer (Sonia Lardy, soprano) tries to remain stable. A successful metaphor for our lives, in which we sometimes end up feeling totally overwhelmed by events, or even by the accelerated pace of new inventions supposed to make our lives easier. The Efflorescence suite, six miniatures for guitar, percussion and piano, invites us to plunge into a sympathetic personal garden, in which six emblematic flowers (Ancolie, Glycine, Hellébore, Pivoine, Jasmin and Hibiscus) symbolically bloom to the sounds of performers as precise as they are sensitive. Et sous Mossoul is logically more tormented, taking us back to the war in Iraq, but manages to express a great deal of humanity thanks to Siham Djabbar’s poem, sung in German. Jesupret’s instrument, the piano, is well served with two magnificent scores: Lueurs immergées (what a beautiful title) for solo piano and the concerto A Butterfly’s Dream, inspired by ancient Chinese philosophy.These are two creations imbued with a bewitching magic of fantastic colors and textures, but also with dynamic shocks that are sometimes percussive.
Remarkable performances by the artists and ensembles involved: Nouvelles Musiques conducted by Jean-Paul Dessy, Ensemble Hopper led by François Deppe, soprano Sonia Lardy and Apolline Jesupret herself at the piano.An album that sets an encouraging tone for contemporary Belgian music.
