Various Composers - French Music for Wind (Orsino Ensemble; Pavel Kolesnikov)

Information

1. Albert Roussel - Divertissement, Op. 6
2. Claude Debussy - Petite pièce, L. 120
3. Claude Debussy - Première rhapsodie, L. 116
4. Camille Saint-Saëns - Romance in F Major, Op. 36
5. Camille Saint-Saëns - Caprice sur des airs danois et russes, Op. 79
6. Cécile Chaminade - Flute Concertino in D Major, Op. 107
7. Charles Koechlin - 2 Nocturnes, Op. 32b: No. 1, Venise
8. Charles Koechlin - 2 Nocturnes, Op. 32b: No. 2, Dans la forêt
9. André Caplet - Quintet, Op. 8: I. Allegro
10. André Caplet - Quintet, Op. 8: II. Adagio
11. André Caplet - Quintet, Op. 8: III. Scherzo
12. André Caplet - Quintet, Op. 8: IV. Finale
13. Claude Debussy - Syrinx, L. 129

Orsino Ensemble

Adam Walker, flute

Nicholas Daniel, oboe

Matthew Hunt, clarinet

Amy Harman, bassoon

Alec Frank-Gemmill, horn

&

Pavel Kolesnikov, piano

Date: 2021

Label: Chandos

https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%205282

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Review

Founded in 2018 by Adam Walker to explore the chamber repertory for wind instruments, the Orsino Ensemble are joined for their debut album by Pavel Kolesnikov for a programme of French music from the fin de siècle, some, but by no means all of it, associated with the Société Moderne des Instruments à Vent, founded in 1895 by Georges Barrère, who played the flute in the first performance of Debussy’s Faune.

It’s an engaging, if eclectic disc. With the exception of Debussy’s Petite pièce and Première Rapsodie, both for clarinet and piano and composed in 1910 as test pieces for Conservatoire students, none of the works included was written for the same combination of instruments, and only one, Roussel’s 1906 Divertissement, features all six players. The best known is probably Debussy’s Syrinx, played by Walker at the close, effectively as the disc’s envoi. The most substantial is André Caplet’s Op 8 Quintet of 1898, neoclassical in its counterpoint and clarity (despite Caplet’s long association with Debussy, we’re reminded here more of Ravel), with a particularly beautiful slow movement.

Saint-Saëns’s lovely Op 36 Romance for horn and piano (1874), meanwhile, reworking part of an earlier (1862) cello suite, is arguably a finer work than the Caprice sur des airs danois et russes, a rather showy pièce d’occasion composed in 1887 in honour of the Danish-born Tsarina Maria Fedorovna. Chaminade’s Concertino for flute and piano is elegant salon music, no more. Koechlin’s Deux Nocturnes (1912, for flute, horn and piano) are the album’s real find, drowsy, sexy pieces, full of unresolved harmonies and undulating rhythms.

As one might expect given Walker’s line-up, the playing is exemplary. Ensemble and counterpoint are precise and taut in the Divertissement and Caplet’s Quintet, and the long clarinet melody in the latter’s Adagio is given space to unwind, breathe and really sing as played by Matthew Hunt. He also does fine things with Debussy’s exacting test pieces, while Alec Frank-Gemmill sounds extraordinarily beautiful in Saint-Saëns’s Romance. Walker’s Syrinx is exquisite, and he and Kolesnikov admirably keep Chaminade just the right side of sentimentality. Kolesnikov is a fine chamber pianist, always knowing when to assert himself and when to draw back, really standing out in Saint-Saëns’s Caprice, where the piano-writing, like the rest of it, is nothing if not virtuoso. Bassoonist Amy Harman has too little to do here but comes into her own in a series of brief, incisive solos in Caplet’s Quintet.

-- Tim Ashley, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2021/May/Belle-epoque-CHSA5282.htm

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2021/Aug/Belle-epoque-CHSA5282.htm

https://www.classical-music.com/reviews/chamber/belle-epoque-french-music-for-wind/

https://www.allmusic.com/album/belle-epoque-french-music-for-wind-mw0003485984

https://www.amazon.com/Belle-Epoque-Orsino-Ensemble/dp/B08WJY65YN

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The Orsino Ensemble made their debut at the Aldeburgh International Festival in 2018.

https://www.orsinoensemble.com/

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Pavel Kolesnikov was born in 1989 in Novosibirsk. He studied at Moscow State Conservatory with Sergei Dorensky, at London’s Royal College of Music with Norma Fisher, and at Brussels’s Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel with Maria João Pires. Kolesnikov became winner of the Honens International Piano Competition in 2012, and was a member of BBC Radio 3’s New Generation Artists in 2014-16. He has performed with orchestras across Canada, Malta, Russia and Brazil, as well as with all the major UK orchestras. Kolesnikov has also given recitals in South Korea, Japan, Spain and Germany.
https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/a.asp?a=A2503

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