Hommage
Jean Absil (1893-1974)
Concert à cinq (1939)
Jacques Pillois (1877-1935)
Cinq Haïkaï "Epigrammes lyriques du Japon" (1926)
Aleksander Tansman (1897-1986)
Sonatina da camera (1952)
Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur (1908-2002)
Suite Médiévale (1945)
Cracow Harp Quintet
rec. 2021, Przemysl, Poland
DUX 1871 [50]
The Cracow Harp Quintet is made up of harp, flute and string trio. There is no other professional chamber ensemble so comprised in Poland. What is more, they seek out and revive concert music that has been forgotten or was never published. In this CD slice of their repertoire, these Cracow players give every impression of being idiomatically adjusted to the four composers’ styles.
The mystery and sobriety of the Absil is soon cast away into music of an impressionistic caste. This is ecstasy in three movements. We start with an ‘Introduction et Allegro’ which is very short, then follows an ‘Andante ’- the longest movement which floats caressingly in a warm cocoon. The ‘Final’ is a waspish, belligerent flight.
Jacques Pillois’ is the most distant in time of the composers heard here. A student of Widor and Vierne he carried the torch for French culture by spending ten months every year on the staff of Smith College in the USA. His worklist reflects the output of a lyric composer: songs, chamber music and choral works. The Cinq Haïkaï is an example of 1930s Gallic Chinoiserie. These pieces of polished lapidary are to be counted among the ranks of the exotic Eastern music of French composers (Delage, Tomasi, Ravel, Cras, Roussel) or, for that matter, similar earlier orientalist works by Lambert, Bliss, Peterkin and Reginald Redman, the latter two awaiting discovery. Each piece is very brief, as befits a haiku. The remorseful third and fourth Haikai - Chagrin d'amour and Solitude "Aubade à la lune", with their melancholic curves, resonate in the mind. None of these brevities will induce impatience. The rambling “Rêves de guerriers morts” is vigorous and deliquescent. This is the Pillois work’s recording premiere.
Alexander Tansman with his Polish and French links fits very well in this company. Sonatina da Camera, from 1952, is the youngest work here. In three movements, its style is distant from the Absil and the Pillois. It inhabits a cooler and less perfervid “mind-world”. It’s more neo-classical, yet at the same time nightmare-ish. Its notes trickle by amid a more objective world.
The long-lived Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur should be better known. A pupil of Tournemire, his career was as organist, composer and music consultant for French radio and television. He was much associated with Messiaen and Jolivet. In the UK, his harp works have figured in BBC Radio 3’s “Through the Night”. No miniaturist, he wrote three full-scale operas and orchestral works, including Symphonie de danses (1958), Symphonie 'd'ombre et de lumière' (1974) and Fantaisie concertante (1992) for cello and orchestra. There are works for chamber groups, piano solos and organ pieces. His choral output includes Le Cantique des Cantiques, a setting for twelve voices. He can be thought of as a medievalist. Certainly there is no impressionistic humidity in the Suite Médiévale which features a hypnotic Complainte and an amicable Danse finale.
The helpful contextual notes in Polish and English are by Daniel Marciniszyn. I just wish he had taken more space to introduce the composers, especially Pillois and Daniel-Lesur. We could have done with more about these excellent musicians, sensitive adepts that they are.
The four chosen scores have been adroitly selected to balance allure with unfamiliarity and nothing here is likely to test your listening endurance.
Rob Barnett
Cracow Quintet: Amelia Lewandowska-Wojtuch (flute), Adrian Nowak (harp), Maria Garstecka (violin), Jan Czyżewski (viola) & Paweł Czarakcziew (cello).
