Fans of Robert Casadesus
will be pleased with this CD survey
of his works. Although not well known
in this guise, Casadesus began composing
around the age of fourteen. This was
at about the time when, after a single
year of formal studies, he took first
prize for piano in a competition adjudicated
by Fauré. His debut as pianist
came at 18, and three years later he
was awarded the Grand Prix Diémer
― named after his teacher, whose
pupils included Cortot and Yves Nat.
At 22, with Ravel witnessing the ceremony, Casadesus
married his colleague-student Gabrielle
l'Hôte, a considerable pianist
in her own right who would come to fame
as his musical partner.
During
the European tour that followed, many
who became central to his career got
a first taste of his refined and spare
playing style ― leagues from the
prevailing post-romantic manner, and
far better suited to the neo-classical
music that was coming to the fore. While
his Mozart recordings are generally
cited as his main legacy, Casadesus
gained favour with de Falla, Ravel,
Roussel and Fauré, among others.
By the 1930s, he was well along a celebrated
career as pianist. This included playing
with top orchestras under the entire
alphabet of notable conductors: Ansermet,
Barbirolli, Beecham, Bernstein, Celibidache,
Karajan, Koussevitsky, Krips, Mengelberg,
Mitropoulos, Monteux, Munch, Ormandy,
Rodzinsky, Rosbaud, Schuricht, Stokowski,
Szell, Toscanini, Bruno Walter, and
Weingartner. His wife Gaby and he were
perhaps the most renowned piano duo
of their time, and his violin-and-piano
duo with his friend Zino Francescatti
was also very successful.
Despite the demands
of this performing career, his
output as a composer came to reach 69
opus numbers, comprising seven symphonies,
three piano concertos, one for two pianos,
another for three pianos and string
orchestra, concertos for violin, flute
and cello, vocal works, and chamber
music that includes four string quartets,
four string trios, two piano trios,
a septet, violin and piano works,
etc.
A
wide range of his music is featured
on this recording ― or recordings,
since these five works involved sessions
spanning almost 20 years. There are
solo piano and chamber works for small
and large groups, as well as his last
concerto, for three pianos and
string orchestra. They show Casadesus
to be a composer of fairly conservative,
tonal music characteristic of the mid-20th
century: graceful, imaginative and well
put together.
As for being well-crafted,
it is odd to this listener that such
a laudable pianist would set the rhythmic
pulse of the vivacious Sardana,
the first of his Three Mediterranean
Dances, to such a wearing lack of
variation, or to perform it with such
little modulation. This is the suite’s
exception, however, as the other two
dances belong to a far more successful
realm: the Sarabande being a
mostly wistful piece that, in stillness
and poetry, at times approaches the
Satiesque. The closing dance, Tarantello,
is a bravura piece for the Casadesus
duo, with jaunty, sometimes raucous,
sometimes graceful convolutions, suiting
a very different facet of the two-piano
genre.
This performance of
his four-movement Violin Sonata No.
2 has the advocacy of Casadesus
and Francescatti, and treads various
fine lines between expressiveness and
restraint. It includes moments of genuine
sweetness, a part-pizzicato, sometimes
jazzy movement with more than a few
winning passages, and a melancholic
adagio of some beauty. The Sextet
for Piano and Wind Instruments is
a sunny, approachable work, suggesting
close attention paid to Poulenc, given
its nifty harmonic interplays and the
overall Gallic transparency. Despite
its instrumentation, the textures of
the Three-Piano Concerto never
turn into an overly thick gruel: this
is an appealing work full of musical
twists and turns, perhaps one or two
too many to leave a clear stamp. So,
much like the Sextet, it is mostly
bright and enjoyable, inhabiting a lightweight
realm that will not likely appeal to
those who require Teutonic grandiloquence
from their piano concertos.
Being a well-presented
collection of finely-crafted works,
rich in ideas, and with its fair share
of felicities, it is curious that this
music seldom rises above the moderately
engaging. This could result from the
lack of a critical mass of individuating
tics or quirks to save it from a certain
anonymity; then again, this is only
an hour or so of music, and not every
composer is a Martinů in distinctiveness.
The Chandos label will soon release
three of the seven Casadesus symphonies:
his First, Fifth and Seventh.
This is likely to assure him a fuller
assessment as a composer, and he might
yet come to figure on his era’s musical
map in a way that has eluded him so
far, at least partly due to the scant
exposure.
Perhaps, on the other
hand, despite this music’s good humour,
its overall lack of weight or gravity
may entail a certain detachment. Indeed,
it is not Casadesus’s close friend Ravel
who most often comes to mind in these
recordings, but Darius Milhaud, whose
music has many well-chosen moments and
a few striking ones, but about whom
few music lovers affirm a passionate
connection.
Although none of this
CD’s recorded sound is beyond the pale,
its quality varies according to the
dates, occasionally calling for some
forgiveness. None of it is digital,
for instance, and only the Concerto
is in stereo. The
1949 provenance of the violin sonata
makes for a dry, thin sound, and Francescatti
is miked much too close ― although
here, as in the other works, for artistic
advocacy one could not ask for better.
Despite minor misgivings,
then, those familiar with contemporary
classical who are curious to explore
the 20th century beyond the
big names could do far worse than to
spend time with Casadesus the composer.
In that context, this CD is well recommended.
Bert Bailey
Robert Casadesus, piano, w. Gaby and Jean+
Casadesus, pianos. 
