Alexandre Tansman - Ballades; Arabesques; Suite dans le style ancien (Éliane Reyes)

Information

Composer: Alexandre Tansman

• Suite dans le style ancien
• Ballades Nos. 1-3
• Arabesques
• 5 Impressions
• 8 Cantilenes, "Homage to J.S. Bach"

Eliane Reyes, piano

Date: 2014

Label: Naxos

https://www.naxos.com/CatalogueDetail/?id=8.573021

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Review

ARTISTIC QUALITY: 9 / SOUND QUALITY: 9

Now that Alexandre Tansman’s orchestral works have received substantial attention on CD, it’s good to see his inventive and idiomatic piano music get its due, thanks in part to Belgian pianist Eliane Reyes’ passionate advocacy. She follows up her outstanding 2010 Naxos world-premiere recordings of the 24 Intermezzi and Petit Suite with four groups of small pieces and the three large-scale Ballades from 1941.

The Suite dans le style ancien updates baroque dance forms in spiffy neo-classical dress characterized by accessible tunes and tart harmonies that take root in Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Poulenc yet sound refreshingly original. Among the six 1930 Arabesques, a Mazurka in homage to Chopin begins with some deliberately “wrong note” melodic trickery, and eventually gives way to more than a few chords lifted (consciously or not) from the Gershwin songbook. The Fanfare’s orchestrally evocative rumbles put both pianist and the instrument’s bass register in peril, while the concluding Danza is a cross-rhythmic finger-twisting tour-de-force.

The lyrical purity and introspection of Bach’s chorale preludes provides the basis for the Eight Cantilenas, although the fifth movement titled “Invention” owes more to Debussy than to any Bach teaching piece. Each of the Ballades deserves a solid place in the central repertoire. They abound with stark declamatory gestures, brooding lyrical paragraphs, and sardonic music hall pastiches.

The bright and closely detailed sonics serve Tansman’s gnarly yet lean keyboard sonorities well, to say nothing of Reyes’ appropriately steel-edged, brilliantly articulated fingerwork. Let’s hope that this second of Reyes’ two Tansman releases signifies a long overdue cycle devoted to the composer’s complete solo piano output.

-- Jed Distler, ClassicsToday

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2014/Apr14/Tansman_piano_8573021.htm

https://www.naxos.com/Review/Detail/?catalogueid=8.573021&languageid=EN

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Alexandre Tansman (12 June 1897 – 15 November 1986) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of Jewish origin. He spent his early years in his native Poland, but lived in France for most of his life, being granted French citizenship in 1938. His music is often said to be primarily neoclassical, drawing on his Polish Jewish heritage as well as his French musical influences. Tansman wrote more than 300 works, including 7 operas, 11 ballets, 6 oratorios, 80 orchestral pages (with 9 symphonies), and numerous works of chamber and piano music. Almost all his works have been now recorded on CDs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Tansman

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Éliane Reyes (born 1977 in Verviers) is a Belgian pianist who is known both as a soloist and as a chamber musician. She studied at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, the Hochschule der Künste Berlin, the Mozarteum Salzburg, the Lemmensinstituut, and the Conservatoire de Paris. She is currently Professor of Piano at both the Royal Conservatory of Brussels and the Conservatoire de Paris. Reyes has a predilection for French composers and contemporary music; her discography consists of works by Chopin, Debussy, Godard, Milhaud, Ravel, Tansman, among others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Éliane_Reyes

https://www.eliane-reyes.com/

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