The period spanning 1890 and 1975 in France is remarkable for
the sheer volume of fine music that poured from the pens of her
composers. Beginning with Debussy and Ravel, and culminating in
the group of talented youth that the multi-faceted artist Jean
Cocteau was to name Les Six, a wealth of fresh and original
music came forth on the planet, the consistent quality of which
is remarkable for any nation at any point in history.
All of the composers
in question were of one mindset, that being of sharp reaction
to Wagnerism and its romantic excesses. The neoclassic ideal,
with its strict adherence to concise and direct formal structure,
clear melodic invention and a well organized sense of harmony
was to dominate the output of more than a dozen truly significant
composers (Poulenc, Milhaud, Honegger, Ravel, amongst others)
and several lesser lights who nonetheless put out a large quantity
of excellent music (Chabrier, Durey, Roger-Ducasse, to name
a few.)
CPO continue to
plumb the fringes of the repertoire and come up with disc after
disc of refreshing, interesting, even invigorating music, well
within the bounds of the public’s taste for the conservative
and far enough off the beaten path to strike the fancy of the
more adventuresome among us. With this release of duo piano
concerti by two composers who performed, and one performer who
composed, we are treated to a splendid series of compact delights;
three brief but intense works that sparkle with energy and invention.
We open with the
whirlwind of a concerto by Poulenc, whose jazz influence is
never far from the surface and who can yet turn around and spin
out a delightful melody in the slow movement worthy of Mozart
or Haydn. Then follows Milhaud’s work, composed a decade later.
A bit more abstract than the fetching, immediately engaging
Poulenc concerto, Milhaud proves himself nonetheless to be no
slouch either in terms of virtuoso display or melodic invention.
The disc concludes
with a work by the great piano virtuoso Robert Casadesus. How
very pleasant it is to hear a composition by this great master
musician and, who was also the patriarch of a remarkable musical
family. Truly one of the greatest musicians of the last century,
Casadesus’ work both as a composer and as a pianist are sadly
underrepresented on disc, and I was personally delighted to
see that this work has appeared in a recent performance.
And what of our
musicians? There is nothing but praise to be given for this
team of pianists whose technique is dazzling, sense of ensemble
is flawless and whose oneness with the music and with each other
is completely palpable. Alun Francis and his orchestra provide
a spirited, elegant accompaniment completely in step with the
geist of this music and full of the sheer joy of playing something
that is both fun and captivating.
CPO’s production
values are of their customary high standard. One complaint however
is that Susan Marie Praeder’s translation of Burkhard Egdorf’s
program note is rife with pretentious multi-syllabic and obtuse
structures of sentence which make for some rather convoluted
and obstreperous necessitations of interpretive prowess on the
part of the reader, demanding the utmost of his lexicographical
intuitiveness. (Get the picture?)
Recommended without
hesitation to lovers of fantastic music and Scrabble players
everywhere.
Kevin Sutton
Piano Duo Genova and
Dimitrov
