"When it comes to wine, you have to know how to put pleasure before prestige," said Paul Claudel. This denied truth can be transposed to music, a harmony of the senses in turmoil and misunderstood geniuses. Wine, pleasure, prestige, that's Lalou Bize-Leroy. Music, the senses in turmoil, the misunderstood genius, that's Geirr Tveitt. She vinifies a Meursault "Les Narvaux" 1995 for her Leroy wine merchant house, for the wine pantheon, he composes Concerto No. 2 for Hardanger Fiddle, "3 Fjords", Part 3: Nordfjord, Giocoso for him, for eternity.
Freshness rhymes with greatness
She is known for her great, prestigious wines: unparalleled volume in the mouth, infinite length, Burgundian breed of terroir. She is little known for the depth of her works, for the finesse and power of these pieces, for her national and folkloric idiom of Norway. In short, everything brings them together: the freshness of the climate, a land of distant ancestors, a profound, pure and transcendental work. Each wine is a melody, a story, each melody is a wine, a story.
Old age is a shipwreck, youth is a mirage
Blind tasting, from the nose, the rhythm is set: I am on a legendary Burgundy Chardonnay, with experience and still a very beautiful acidity, and I do not recognize the mark of the domain; I do not know it. Tension, vivacity and youth allow to carry this wine to the firmament of Burgundy. On the palate, it is still absolutely vague: the acidic framework extends the wine, the volume Dantesque, the vitality overwhelming: my palate remains speechless in front of this summit. "it's a rock! ... it's a peak... it's a cape!
What am I saying, it's a cape? ... it's a peninsula! " proclaimed Cyrano de Bergerac in the eponymous work by Edmond de Rostand. "To the ear," the resonance is also straight, tense, determined. The melody is folkloric, concentrated and elongated: my ears freeze, my blood runs cold, my hair stands on end, my body is in a trance.
Peace and quiet is a luxury
The rhythms are sustained and in harmony. One is the other, the other is one. In Japanese, tasting and listening translate the same way. Japanese wisdom. Throughout the tasting, during the 9 minutes 40 seconds of concerto, there is no slump or relaxation, only a calming, a revitalization, a contemplation. Each person draws from the depths of their terroir and their guts to offer the most beautiful things their motherland has to offer, deep in its roots, in its strings. Common uprightness.
Transcendence
The pace is infernal, transcendental. The grandiose makes me dizzy. Joy for my senses and my soul, it intoxicates me, and the music, the wine transport me to their secret garden. They try to raise me to their level to respect the precepts of the art of oratory, which enchant my inspiration: to please, to instruct, to move. I don't believe in intoxication yet, we've just come out of a beautiful Dom Pérignon "œnothèque" 1992, but joy is certain. Lalou comes from the Latin Laetitia: "joy, joy." Drinking is heresy, savoring is frenzy.
Depth to excess
" If the Music courses is so dear to us, it is because it is the deepest word of the soul, the harmonious cry of its joy and its pain. " said Romain Rolland. The depth of the soul of this duo is insane, only bathymetry will be able to help me measure its extent. Although humility, curiosity and patience could be more effective?
Soaring into the air
Both have it in the pedal, like Anquetil climbing my beloved Pyrenees. I now have only one duty: to savor it and listen to it until the last drop, the last note. Otherwise, I will be the only false note. Geirr means "the spear" in Norwegian, I better grasp this slender aspect, this flight, this length. They hover above us, within us, and we follow them with our eyes, our palate, our ears.
Because power and finesse are not opposed
Richness, variety, and generosity frame these two works of art. These incessant back-and-forths on the violin, this lingering back-and-forth in the mouth: to be complete, this is their supreme and common quality. The aromatics are as exceptional as they are extravagant: jasmine, hazelnut butter, toasted hazelnut, fresh almond, rose. Extravagant is also the case with this classical music inspired by folk. The power and finesse are here as complementary as they are different. Power, this divine richness like the beauty of a siren, enveloping like her hand on my neck, warm like her breath in my ear. This richness is not heaviness, it is stupor.
Terroir or cosmos?
The solo of the virtuoso Geirr on the Hardanger violin is in every way similar to the solo that Lalou plays in his vineyards, his vats, his cellar. The Fjord- vallée unique eroded by a glacier advancing from the mountain to the the sea, invaded by the sea since the retreat of the ice– Hardanger is the latter's native and childhood land. As for Lalou, if it was in Paris that she "came into the world" (as Sacha Guitry said of Mozart), it is on the fresh, Burgundian terroir of Vosne-Romanée, Meursault, Auxey-Duresses and Saint-Romain that she learned her trade, and what artillery! Each one gives us a different texture, a deep density and a supernatural atmosphere. "Wine is cosmic in inspiration, it tastes of the matter of the world," said the Queen of Burgundy. Strangely, it is also in the Geirr Fjords that the Northern Lights extend, a captivating cosmos.
A destiny all mapped out
During his adolescence, Geirr decided to become a composer, and so in 1955 he began the 1er concerto of this masterful work. The same year, as if by chance, Lalou suddenly decided to work in the vineyard as she recounts in Bourgogne Aujourd'hui on March 22, 2016: "If I stayed with him (her father), he would let me do mountain work. I didn't think long and said okay. We turned around immediately (from the hotel school in Lausanne where she was applying), and the next day, I was at the office." Ten years later, in 1965, he completed his work with this 2th A concerto in three parts, as for Lalou, 3 years old, the age of happiness, the age of Christ. The cosmos...
Art is useless, is man too?
The preface to the CD published for his reinterpretation in 2002 is modest: childish writing, "Geirr Tveitt" at the top right, followed below by the name of the work. Then a drawing, a man, face hidden on a galloping horse overlooking a marsh and water lilies, it could be a Dagueneau label. Just like Geirr and this reissue, Lalou demonstrates humility. A refined, simple, and elegant label: "Leroy" at the bottom left, "Meursault Les Narvaux" in large letters in the center, "Négociants à Auxey-Duresses" at the bottom right. The wine also remains humble, it is only "the wine of the trade," not from Domaine d'Auvenay, and it is only a "Meursault Les Narvaux," not a Criots, not a Bâtard, not a Chevalier. Music and wine are at the forefront, not men.
There is a before and after Lalou, Geirr…
Hugo Serres – Cave Alliée, wine merchant
I devote myself to writing; I associate, I compare, I extract the substantial marrow of wines and musical works to reveal the alchemy that is played out between these two forms of art.
It is with a original, aesthetic and romantic pen that I take you into an epicurean and didactic universe... »
