Georges Migot: Le Zodiaque, 12 Etudes de Concert. Jacqueline Eymar 1959-60. 2 CDs Integral Classic INT 221.144 (2005) 3576072211448
Recorded 1959-60
Maybe Migot lacked a measure of verticality
Originally posted (in French) on Amazon.fr, 14 February 2012
George Migot is one of those very obscure (even in his own country), nth-league minor masters, with something of a cult niche-following. Migot was born in 1891 and died in 1976, which makes him, by birth at least, a contemporary of Ibert and Honegger and, by birth AND death, of Milhaud (1892-1974). Migot saw himself as much as a painter and a poet than as a composer. In music, he viewed himself as the heir of the “French tradition” of the Troubadours, of Titelouze, of Rameau, and as primarily a melodist, one for whom horizontal monophony (plainchant, popular song) was more essential than harmony. He was an independent, and in the 1920s the American critic Irwin Schwerke dubbed him, in reference to the “Groupe des Six”, the “Groupe du Un” (I venture GOO as a translation, the “Group of the One and Only”). As many independents, his fame soon passed. After the war he made a living by being in charge of the museum of instruments of the Paris Conservatoire. Born of a Protestant minister, he also had a religious and mystical bent, as his cycle of Twelve Studies on the Zodiac, composed between 1931 and 1939, attests.
They display a mixture of mysticism vaguely evoking Scriabin (at the beginning of Taurus especially, CD 1 track 4) and sometimes of Ravel and Albeniz, but it is the bitter-sweetness of Prokofiev’s last Sonatas that most often came to mind, with none of the unique personality of either. The music can be atmospheric and watery in its rippling textures (CD 1 track 1 Verseau/Aquarius), tender (CD1-2 Piscus), but it is often stark, austere and pounding, as in Aries (CD 1 track 3), Taurus (CD 1 track 4), Cancer (CD 1 track 6, strangely called in French “Ecrevisse”, Crayfish, the original symbol of Cancer), Leo (CD 2 track 1), Capricorn (CD 2-6), bringing to mind the Evocations of Carl Ruggles or the piano music of Dane Rudhyar. It is also animated and toccata-like in Scorpio (CD 2-3 Scorpio), and Sagittarius (2-5).
But it doesn’t offer much melodically or harmonically that really stands out and leaves an imprint on attention and in memory, and it is all ultimately rather bland, except possibly in the two toccata-like movements, Scorpio and Sagittarius. The longest (Cancer, Leo) seem to ramble endlessly.
Also, listening to the samples of the same pieces played by Stéphane Lemelin on Atma Classics (2006, barcode 722056238120), there is probably a better case to be made for the music of Migot, at least in the atmospheric, rippling pieces like Aquarius, than Jacqueline Eymar’s dry playing, unaided by the relatively metallic restitution of her piano.
The recordings were made in 1959-60 for the small French label Lumen, LD 3.443 and LD 3.445 (links will open new tabs to listing on Discogs.com) and were reissued in 1984, on LP only, on Cybelia CY 665-666 (a small French label in operation from 1982 to 1995 and a champion of Migot’s music). 
Integral Classics is another, more recent small French label, founded in 1996 and devoted mainly to French music of the early 20th Century (apparently, at the date of repost here, September 2024, they are now gone as well). They have a number of other Migot discs in their catalog, see the end of my review of Migot’s chamber music with woodwinds and harp by the Swiss Ensemble Pyramide, INT 221.108, for a discography). They didn’t do a very good job with this one: it is transferred directly from LP, with dim surface noise and, more annoying, some bumps (as in CD 1 track 5) and saturation in some of the climaxes.
Better go to the recent recording of Lemelin.