The consolation

The concert accordion. Joseph Petric. The Baroque: Rameau, Padre Antonio Soler and J.S. Bach. Countless times I have listened to these recordings. They are a marvel…a consolation. The accordion – its sound world is delicate and complex: the sound from an anonymous street corner somewhere in Paris or Buenos Aires yet like the organ can express a wide range of tonal depths (more intimately perhaps). Petric’s recording of Luciano Berio’s Sequenza XIII for accordion is a particular favourite, what journeys take place in that piece. Just the other day I read this in E.M. Cioran’s Notebooks 1957-1972:

“25 December - The sign that I like a fragment of music, that it addresses that which is deepest in me, is the desire I feel when I hear it, to turn out the light, if it is night or to close the shutters if it is day. As if I were listening in a tomb. I usually listen to Bach in this way. Bach, over the years, my most faithful companion”