Dernières nouvelles d'Alsace
May 7th 2004

Initiator and artistic director of the first "Encounters with Women Musicians" on the Isle of Ushuant (known as the "the island of women") in 2001, following her launch there in 1993 of a Summer Academy open to both professional and talented amateur musicians, Lydia Jardon is a passionate and actively-involved artist. She has even created her own record label AR RE-SE ("Those women" in Breton language).
At the piano, too, she is awe-inspiring. We discover her strength of conviction with this disc recorded with Mireille Jardon on the violin (a member of the European Community Orchestra and who also performs with the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra).
Nothing is too off the beaten track for this duo, one suspects. Here, therefore, they tackle passages originating from across the Channel, with sonatas by Frank Bridge and Alan Rawsthorne, and a Suite by Benjamin Britten... played with pronounced conviction and fiery spirit.

La Croix
June 2004
Jean-Luc Macia

Pianist Lydia Jardon has skilfully brought to light her serene virtuosity, notably thanks to the many discs she has recorded for her own label. With her less well-known sister, Mireille, she forms a piano/violin duet of high standard which caught our attention, above all through an original and very English programme. A Benjamin Britten suite with highly descriptive moods, a sonata by his master Frank Bridge marked by post-Romantic fervour, and another signed Alan Rawsthorne (1905-1971), [a composer] ignored on this side of the Channel but endowed with a most appealing classical and flavoured writing. In any event, by venturing off the beaten track, the Jardon sisters illustrate their perfect acclimatisation to British mists and plays of light and shade, with one deploying rousing fast passages with her bow, and the other a solid piano tapestry. To discover.

Le Monde de la musique
April 2004
John Tyler Tuttle

This is a rare and unexpected programme for French performers. From the very first bars of the Bridge Sonata, listeners know that this is no wishy washy recording. Bridge composed his only Sonata for violin and piano in 1932, when his work was fully mature, after the Sonata for solo piano, which marked a turning point in his writing. This one-movement Sonata was daringly modern for the England of its time, and it is as fresh today as it was then. Dedicated to the great American patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, who commissioned several works from Bridge (and Stravinsky’s "Dumbarton Oaks” concerto), it asserts itself in a virtuoso style.

Britten, a student of Bridge, composed his Suite in 1934-1935 in Vienna. Following the Sinfonietta Op. 1 and the Simple Symphony Op. 4, it provides a further demonstration of the young composer’s mastery of composition for stringed instruments. The varied atmospheres, with a nod to The Soldier’s Tale, perfectly express the young composer’s exuberance and confidence in his own talents.

Alan Rawsthorne, the least well known of the three composers, tried his hand at almost all genres, except opera. Constructed in the classical style, his Violin Sonata (1959) is dedicated to Josef Szigeti. Its four movements illustrate the composer’s hallmark elegance.

In perfect harmony, the Jardon sisters have produced an irresistible recording. The only negative point is the somewhat miserly length. A Delius sonata, or the Elgar or the Walton would have been a welcome addition.

Are these sisters twins, or Siamese twins? You wonder, because of the way Mireille and Lydia Jardon seen to blend into a single musician. For this foray across the channel, turning their backs on the Vaughan Williams cow-pie pastoral style, they have chosen three difficult, allusive pieces in which the unformulated implications are as important as the text. Their clear and natural approach confers a transparency on these pieces that will make them obvious to even the most resistant listener.
The Sonata by Bridge is one of the high points of his last modernist period. Its impressionist heritage is woven together with expressionist chromatic trends, The performers are able to reconcile these antagonistic threads, arriving at a purity of style and balance of construction that are ideally matched to the composer’s intentions. Lydia delivers the crystalline piano sonorities, muting the trebles with such restraint that it accentuates the mystery and poetic unreality. The Scherzo is a perilous, delirious moment of virtuoso, controlled, without suppressing the onirism. In contrast with the slightly outrageous expressionism of Lorraine McAsian and John Blakely (Continuum, 1991), the Jardon sisters adopt the classic approach. It is a different, and well-supported, concept of the refinement and elegance of Bridges’ latest work.
On the lighter side, Britten’s Suite is overwhelmingly spirited, engaging and filled with sly wit. The delight of this sophisticated reading is found in incisive contrasts between the accelerations and the delicate tones. Rawthorne calls for more reserve: at least the perfect synchronisation does justice to the somewhat formal linear dialogue. In an intelligent break with routine, the sisters deliver brio, style and poetry that will win over the most stubborn enemies of Albion.

Piano Magazine
Mars-Avril 2005
Robert Harmon

We have known Lydia Jardon for a long time as the remarkable pianist she has never ceased to be. She is now back with her own sister (a violonist) in a captivating, well-conceived and interpreted program, which felicitously combines the very rare Sonata for violin and piano by Bridge (1879-1941) and the Suite, Benjamin Britten’s (1913-1976) unrecognized and just as interesting opus 6, followed by Alan Rawsthorne’s (1905-1971) Sonata, dedicated to the great violonist Joseph Szigeti. The sound depth of the two interpreters, who always seem to be singing with one and only one voice – after all, they are sisters! –, the sometimes heart-rending depth of a playing that has a skin-deep expressiveness and makes no concessions, the elegant, perfectly shaped phrasings but also the considerable personal and emotional commitment of the two musicians all make this rare record an absolute reference in this field, one that should be known by all lovers of classical twentieth-century British music. Indeed, not many duos were able to express to such an extent the gripping emotions of, say, Bridge’s Sonata. Worlds away from the academical, utterly stiff coldness that too many chamber musicians feel obliged to adopt when facing such scores, which are much more emotional than is generally believed – perhaps because Bridge was an Englishman? –, the Jardon sisters go straight to the spirit and heart of these pages which they avidly and thoroughly explore. Moreover, the program’s consistency in bringing together three contemporary English composers who were different from each other but who shared a common sensitivity and used a comparable language only enhances the interest of this first-class record.