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Find solace in the accordion

Dagens Nyheter (SW)

With regard to an article on a preview page last Saturday about a Hindi version of Les Feuilles Mortes/autumn leaves, I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to mention a Dutch version of the song, as a tribute to a remarkable accordion recording.

It is "remarkable" in that there is little "remarkable" about it – it is more a feeling, an impression of mood. The accordionist Jean-Pierre Guiran was born in France, but has spent the last 17 years of his life near Driebergen in the Netherlands with his partner and fellow-accordionist Cherie de Boer. Their home is a moated, stone barn nestling among several fairytale castles. It is this magical atmosphere that has been quoted as the secret to the modest glow that emanates from the L'imparfait du Coeur CD. "The imperfection of the heart" as one of the titles puts it, by Jean-Pierre Guiran himself, with the faintest suspicion of a northern minor tone to the continental melancholy.

The duo has chosen the name Accordion Melancolique accordingly, and they play melancholic numbers without lyrics, with a reserved force that immediately comes across as being very desirable. They play naturally, without glitter.

They alternate the transient foxtrot with the thoughtless tango and the musette waltz of the small bistro. Latin American, Greek, and Antillian waltz, followed by La Vie en Rose – (I dream in rose red) played quite straightforwardly, as if for the very first time and as if no other version had ever been produced. Similarly, they playfully render the essence of Trenet’s La Mer

The imperfection of the heart of the melancholic accordion is manifest to the full in the absence of a Swedish distribution channel.

OVE SÄVERMAN, Dagens Nyheter, DN 11/ 3, 2000, Sweden. (translation Bromiley)

Swedish original, Nederlands vertaling

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