Alessandra Celletti
Les sons et les parfums

Alessandra Celletti - "Les sons et les parfums" Bleriot (1994)

Oh, nice, then. Just what we needed! Another version - the 1,347th in the history of records - of pages by Debussy, Ravel, and Satie. And to show Alessandra that every drop of meaning and emotion had already been squeezed from the "Préludes" and the "Gnossiennes," I listened to her version of "Le vent dans la plaine" face-to-face with the others from my discotheque.

Alessandra is 39 years old, dresses oddly, is courteous, and her eyes sparkle, but I didn’t suspect that a punk knew something that Gieseking hadn't discovered. Yet, Gieseking plays clumsily where Alessandra's notes fly fluidly, gratuitously violent where she is considerately imperative. Robert Casadesus is excessively danceable, too accented compared to the capricious poetry that Alessandra finds in "Les sons et les parfums...". Jeni Zaharieva loses the folk dance cadences of "Les collines d'Anacapri" in a concert hall virtuosity more suited to a ballet. Alessandra, on the other hand, instinctively captures its Neapolitan essence. The "Footsteps in the Snow" by Théodore Paraskivesko seem rushed, the "Girl with the Flaxen Hair" by Claudio Arrau is dazed and that of Paul Jacobs too precious. Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli's preludes, then, are so wooden and ticking that they seem to be played by Pinocchio. The miniatures by Ravel and, above all, by Satie are equally sensitive to the interpreter's filter, and Alessandra surprises us by finding hidden melodies in well-known pieces, naturally relating the notes with new emphasis and timings. She is aware, in Satie's reading breaths, of Reinbert De Leeuw's decadent, exhausted lesson, whose elephantine slowness still fascinates with its mystery.

A beautiful record, indeed. Unexpectedly, just what we needed.