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Monday, October 31, 2016

Charles Koechlin - Piano Quintet; String Quartet No. 3 (Sarah Lavaud; Antigone Quartet)


Information

Composer: Charles Koechlin
  1. Piano Quintet, Op. 80: 1. The obscure wait of what shall be ... (Andante très calme presque adagio)
  2. Piano Quintet, Op. 80: 2. The enemy attack - The wound (Allegro con moto)
  3. Piano Quintet, Op. 80: 3. Consoling nature (Andante)
  4. Piano Quintet, Op. 80: 4. Finale. The joy (Allegro moderato)
  5. String Quartet No. 3, Op. 72: 1. Très calme
  6. String Quartet No. 3, Op. 72: 2. Scherzo
  7. String Quartet No. 3, Op. 72: 3. Adagio
  8. String Quartet No. 3, Op. 72: 4. Final

Sarah Lavaud, piano (1-4)
Antigone Quartet
Floriane Bonanni, violin
Saori Furukawa, violin
Aurélia Souvignet-Kowalski, viola
Pauline Bartisol, cello

Date: 2008
Label: AR Re-Se
http://www.arre-se.com/disk_koechlin2.html




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Review

It would be difficult to name another composer so little beholden to the attitudes, gestures, and expectations of Western music—archaic, religious, operatic, elegant, heroic, lyric, “daringly Modern”—than Charles Koechlin, though he was deeply versed in them all. Instead, his most ambitiously characteristic music hovers on the brink between the psychic and the somatic—inscapes preoccupied with sickness and healing. The movements of the Piano Quintet, for instance, follow a program familiar from other Koechlin works (e.g., Le Buisson ardent, Le Docteur Fabricius —see Fanfare 28:2) outlined in their titles—“The Obscure Wait of What Shall Be ... The Enemy Attack—The Wound ... Consoling Nature ... Joy.” Notions of dissonance, expanded tonality, chains of fifths—all the tropes of analysis, in fact—seem irrelevant in the face of a music so strangely accomplished, though one may turn to them for aural orientation. Which is to say that this aspect of Koechlin is far from surefire—an acquired taste. A taste worth acquiring? When Les Préludes, Ein Heldenleben, La Mer, Alborada del gracioso, etc., and all those works derived from them, provoke only a jaded smile one may discover a novel and rewarding, if attenuated, refreshment in Koechlin. The string quartets, on the other hand, are Koechlin at his most accessible, charm-rife and chaste through the First, wizened yet affirmative in the Second (recording premieres by the Ardeo Quartet, AR RE-SE 20063, Fanfare 31;6), and melodically generous, confidingly effusive in the Third—a manner reminiscent of Fauré’s String Quartet. The movements are very brief, the magical Scherzo, at 4:10, being the longest, and over far too soon. Allusions to reveille in the Adagio loom as distant “real”-world intrusions into an enchanted demesne grown apprehensive and elegiac, while the skipping triplets of the Final—Koechlin’s formula for joy—for once, are inspired and gratifyingly persuasive. Lightweight yet pithy, smiling but fraught, in the manner of the piano sonatinas, the Third Quartet is uniquely, radiantly satisfying and, in its offhand way, clues the ear for the altogether stranger world of the Piano Quintet. Performances are delving through the former and deftly singing in the latter. Sound is close yet open, vibrant yet detailed. Both works are disc premieres— de rigueur for Koechlin mavens, and enthusiastically recommended. 

-- Adrian Corleonis, FANFARE

More reviews:

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Charles Koechlin (27 November 1867 – 31 December 1950) was a French composer, teacher and writer on music. He was a political radical all his life and a passionate enthusiast for such diverse things as medieval music, The Jungle Book of Rudyard Kipling, Johann Sebastian Bach, film stars (especially Lilian Harvey and Ginger Rogers), traveling, stereoscopic photography and socialism. Koechlin was enormously prolific. Despite his lack of worldly success, Koechlin was apparently a loved and venerated figure in French music.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Koechlin

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Sarah Lavaud (born 1982 in Lyon) is a French pianist. She studied with Bruno Rigutto, Nicholas Angelich, Christian Ivaldi and Michaël Levinas at CNSM Paris. She also studied with Jean-Claude Pennetier, Maria Curcio, Rena Shereshevskaya, Hüseyin Sermet, György Kurtág, and Franco Scala. Winner of numerous international competitions, she has given recitals in prestigious halls in Lyon, Paris and in festival, both in France and abroad.

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