Paulette Verlée, the alter ego of Veerle Pollet, learned to play the piano at a young age with the works of Bach and Schumann. For her first full-length album, which was released last year, she drew inspiration from Erik Satie. For her new work ‘Les Barricades Mystérieuses,’ François Couperin was the starting point. Captivated by his “leçons de ténèbres,” she first created her own distinctive piano version of “MEM,” and later composed new, original work based on his somewhat humorous and mysterious titles of his ‘pièces de clavecin.’ The new album has become a refined collection of neoclassical music, with Paulette’s recognizable touch, this time with a nod to baroque music.

Not only Paulette was inspired by Couperin’s delightful titles. Magritte also created no less than two works with the same title, ‘Les Barricades Mystérieuses.’ As a resident of Jette and a great admirer of Magritte, she could not help but reference this in the album’s artwork.

On stage, the piano pieces are again accompanied by thoughtful cello parts, performed by Maaike Organe. The visual material projected live behind them mainly comes from the Berlin film pioneer Walter Ruttmann. His abstract animated films from the 1920s perfectly complement Magritte’s surrealistic imagery.

With this album, Paulette Verlée delivers a worthy successor to “choses vues à droite et à gauche (sans lunettes),” which received airplay on Radio 1 and Klara. Nils Frahm also expressed his enthusiasm and included the single ‘Reprieve for Piano Solo’ in his personal Spotify playlist. Recently, Paulette was in the spotlight with her unique rework of the song “11.10” by Sohnarr (the band around Patricia Vanneste, ex-violinist of Balthazar who also created the soundtrack for “Knokke Off”).