Album of the day: Martial Solal, "Solitude"

Album of the day: Martial Solal, “Solitude”

Martial Solal
“Solitude” (CamJazz CD CAMJ 7794-2)

Martial Solal’s timeless piano still allows itself a solo interlude in this album, which stands out
from the many other recitals carried out by this French/Algerian musician for an even more rhapsodic, almost capricious character.
The ideas chase each other with extreme freedom, supported by the impeccable piano technique and the mastery of the jazz language recognized in Solal for decades now, yet this time it is as if the pianist had decided to give free rein to the imagination without worrying too much about formal coherence and sewing together a myriad of completely different ideas, recoloring famous standards such as “Solitude”, “Caravan” and “On a Clear Day” transfiguring them completely (just listen to the dark chordal agglomeration in the low register from whose resonance the theme of “Darn That Dream” magically arises “, proposed in two different versions, or the continuous, unstable, rhythmic and dynamic fluctuations of “Our Love Is Here to Stay”).

This new “conversation with himself” has a character of absolute intimacy, as if Solal did not take into account the microphones present in the studio or the fact that there will be other listeners to these notes besides him; however, this attitude never turns into solipsism or narcissistic contemplation of one’s own navel, the communicative capacity that this music possesses in abundance is clearly revealed with every minute of listening.

In self-composed pages such as “Chi va piano…” and “Medium” we find the taste for angular harmonies that bring to mind both Monk and composers such as Messiaen and Dutilleux, the melodic phrases completely devoid of sentimentality always punctuated by floating figures of great mobility that sometimes appear as real sound interferences with respect to the main musical discourse.
The pianism of the then eighty-year-old Solal in no way shows the signs of the passing of time; each of his new recordings gives us an artist full of imagination, who hates repeating what he has already done and continually refines his musical language with artisanal patience.

Unfortunately, the recording favors a rather metallic and percussive sound, with a very close positioning of the microphones which does not fully do justice to Solal’s dynamic capabilities.

Carlo Boccadoro, composer and conductor, was born in Macerata in 1963. He lives and works in Milan. He collaborates with soloists and orchestras in different parts of the world. He is the author of numerous books on musical topics.

This text is taken from “Lunario della musica: A record for every day of the year” published by Einaudi, courtesy of the author and the publisher.