The fourth box of the singer’s integral, author, composer and conductor brings together twenty CDs including three unpublished instrumental works.
by Sylvain Siclier
planned to be delivered to record stores at the end of November 2022, the fourth box of the integral Léo Ferré (1916-1993), a series supervised by his son Mathieu and Alain Raemackers, experienced a slightly longer manufacturing time. It is now available. After the volume of the early days for phonographic companies Le Chant du Monde and Odéon, published in 2018, the two of the Barclay period, published respectively in 2020 and 2021, here is the 1975-1991 margin, which brings together twenty CDs. Or the last years of the phonographic production of Léo Ferré published during his lifetime, at the time broadcast respectively by CBS, the ephemeral Label Love for songs in Italian, Barclay for a single album, RCA and EPM. With this set, three cd of unpublished instrumental works.
The margin is the title of one of the songs of the triple album Ludwig – L’Imaginaire – Le Bateau Ivre (1982) here reissued on two CDs. A great work of which Ferré has written the orchestrations, and where he directs the workforce of the Milan Symphony Orchestra – in fact those of RAI, the Italian public audiovisual group, which, for contractual reasons, cannot be mentioned -, With a choir, a set of percussion. He is also on the piano, accompanied by the guitarist Toti Soler.
The clutch shows a chair, in front of a low wall, a dog near him, an olive tree, the blue sky. He is at home, at the San Donatino estate, in Castellina in Chianti, a commune halfway in Florence and Siena. He settled there in 1971, with Marie -Christine Diaz, met a few years earlier -they will marry in 1974 -and Mathieu, born in 1970. Soon will be born Marie -Cécile, in 1974, and Manuella, in 1978. On other covers, moments of this family life in Tuscany, including those of I give you (1976), the opera of the poor (1983) where we are not serious when we are seventeen (1986 )…
Artistic freedom
For almost all of the albums in this box, Ferré is in loyalty, in friendship with Milan’s musicians and musicians. He also records in two city studios. After years of frustration, he finally has his hand on the orchestrations to highlight his texts as he thinks they must be, and can direct a large symphonic set for recordings – in the early 1970s, Barclay the had granted him without enthusiasm. We hear the joy of an artistic freedom conquered in these Italian years.
For the scene, it will be more difficult, even if sometimes Ferré manages to bring this deployment to life, singing at the heart of the orchestra, facing the public, while leading the music by movements of the hands, arms. Having seen it in 1975 at the Palais des Congrès in Paris remains a wonderful memory. When he cannot bring together what is necessary of performers, Ferré sings accompanied by a trailer, as at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in 1984, of which we find all three hours here with the album Ferré 84.
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