Review Summary: A beautiful collection of folk breton songs
A year prior the release of
Le Onde, the debut of Ludovico Einaudi, an italian pianist of international success who revolutionized (at least in Italy) the masses' idea of the piano, a lesser known Breton pianist named Didier Squiban released his first work:
Molène.
Almost all of the pieces are traditional Breton songs arranged sometimes in a jazzy way, sometimes in a new age/ambient one, and divided in three suites: each one is made of six pieces, which have the name of the last one. Squiban can perfectly play with the Breton sounds so it is almost impossible to discern what is written by him and not simply arranged. He also has an enviable knowledge of music theory, managing perfectly frequent changes of time signature (“Ar Baradoz” changes its time signature sixteen times), and less frequent changes of tonality. Another of
Molène's strengths is the way he uses a lot of tuplets, like quintuplets, septuples, decuplets and tredecuplets. The result of the union of all these elements is a truly inspired and technical work, one that if it had been written 100 years ago, today it would quite likely be a classic.
So, every technicality is not a purpose to itself, on the contrary they don't seem constrained in any way. But technicalities are nothing without the beauty: take “Ledenez” for instance, it seems to be more of a romantic piano improvisation rather than a mere demonstration of skill. Squiban, like all the solo instrumentalists can allow himself to use the “tempo rubato”, that means that he's not bound to respect all the durations of every single note, and this makes it more difficult to understand (and appreciate) every change of time signature.
Technicalities aside,
Molène also features some short and less complex tracks, like “An Alach” or “An Skoliater”, which are a kind of break and prove that Squiban can impress even with simple things. Throughout the album there is always the same sound, but this doesn't mean that it is boring or monotonous, vice versa
Molène is quite varied and every piece has its own identity and style: some pieces seem to be something like some Breton dance and have a strong folk sound like “Suite de gavottes des montagnes” or “Kost ar Choat” and some are more jazzy, for example “Variations sur laride a 6 temps” that seems almost improvised, others lend themselves well to do the soundtrack for a movie, like “Trugerekat Men Dous”.
In conclusion
Molène is an excellent debut for an underrated pianist like Didier Squiban, a very solid release where each song has a lot of replayability and the entire album has no weaknesses.
Highly recommended if you like jazz, progressive, or new age.
Recommended tracks:
Ar Baradoz
Ledenez
Trugerekat Men Dous
Ker Eon
Pedenn
Enez Eusa
