Sylvette Allart / Théodore Parasquive – De L'Onde À L'Infini (1974)

A bit of a waste of a perfectly good instrument this is. I’m always prone to thinking that any occasion to showcase esoteric instruments - in this case, the Ondes Martenot (grand name, to begin with) - is a good one, but the fact is that, by its very nature, very few people find a way to make them interesting, especially when the instruments arise from more or less individual invention rather than evolve from a cultural tradition, refining its use around its specific musical properties, from which forms of individual appropriation can more consequentially arise. 

So, in many examples (particularly in electronic music) of musicians (and/or engineers) trying to advance and legitimise instrumental novelty, they opt for using it to mimic a conventional aesthetic, hoping to make the new medium acceptable to a larger crowd, and render it socially, culturally and economically viable. 

Usually it’s adaptations of popular songs and/or classical pieces - as in Clara Rockmore's Theremin (1977), of which, sadly, I'm not a fan. Here, Sylvette Allart (the "ondist", as it were) and Théodore Parasquive (or "Theodor Paraskivesco", in other releases, on piano) actually bothered to go for original works (a big plus in my book) but, unfortunately, still slightly to no avail, since most are dainty neo-classical compositions, rather ill-fitted to make full use of the otherworldly sonic emanations the instrument is capable of (L’oiseu de Java, by Luc André Marcel (of whom, unsurprisingly, I know no other work), probably comes closest to tapping into that). 

As such, this is a bit like the musical equivalent of using a computer to hit a nail. There's nothing wrong with the execution here, and it’s fine as a curiosity, but if you are hoping to get your Ondes Martenot rocks really off, I'm afraid Messiaen’s compositions - particularly when handled by the ondist Jeanne Loriod, sister of the pianist Yvonne Loriod, in turn Messiaen's second wife (what a family!) - or even the odd Radiohead track (after Jonny Greenwood latched onto the instrument, morphing into something of a socio-musical symbiont), are still the way to go.