Perhaps
dreams - restful and restless - are common to all music.
Certainly they play a crucial part in Koechlin's creative
apparatus.
Subtle,
imbued with tragic feeling as befits the time of its composition,
is Koechlin's potently charged Viola Sonata. It is
of the most melancholic beauty in the first and third movements
straddling a divide between Howells' chamber music of that
period and Bax's own viola sonata of 1922. A contemporary
madness plays over the scherzo. The passion of the times
boils over in the finale but ultimately subsides into profound
resignation and consolation. The two instruments have roles primus
inter pares and this is further signified by the title
which is sonata for piano and viola. It is dedicated
to Milhaud who premiered it in Paris in 1915 with Jeanne
Herscher-Clément.
Les
Paysages et Marines is
a sequence of twelve often gentle pieces, none longer
than 2:23 and many much shorter. It was originally for
piano solo. The present chamber ensemble version was
made in the last year of Koechlin's life - a sentimental
journey no doubt. These encompass the restful, the smiling
and the easygoing with a 'swing', a subtle affection
in the manner of Debussy but always unclouded: paragons
of instrumental clarity. Le chant du chèvrier is
predictably Pan-like and classical. Koechlin effortlessly
crystallises mood and ambience.
Both L'Ancienne
maison de campagne and Quatre Nouvelles Sonatines relate
to childhood but from the vantage point of adulthood. L'Ancienne
maison de campagne is a set of thirteen pieces each
titled. Only La Vieille Fontaine makes free with
stark ringing Pierrot-style cut-glass discords. The other
pieces mix memories of long distant piano lessons, the
clip of folksong, the sway of lapping impressionism (as
in En ramant sur le lac) - all sharply etched moods.
For me the most impressive of this vivid cycle is the tolling
unshaded gleam of Les Collines et la vie tranquille where
a Mediterranean warmth slows the pulse almost as much as
the equally strong Reliques de deuil.
Then come
the four Nouvelles sonatines. Folksy - even
pretty - dances alternate with echoing shards of 18th century
figuration - as in the finale of sonatine 3. Often more reflective
material is used with the composer delighting in slow chordal
decay and a slightly quicker-paced right-hand melodic line.
Koechlin's mastery with material related to popular and local
sources is comparable with that of another fine composer,
Ronald Stevenson. These four little sonatas are innocent
yet far from simple-minded pieces.
CD2 ends
with the Danse Lente from Danses pour Ginger -
yes another film tribute to go with so many others; this
time to Ginger Rogers. The Danse is one of five pieces
written when having written to Lilian Harvey she showed no
interest whatsoever in his music. The Danse Lente has
the honeyed and unhurriedly mellifluous tread of Satie's Gymnopédies and
of Ravel's Mère l'Oye. Here is a discovery awaiting
the seeker after atmospheric music for television or film
productions.
The two
sets of L'Album de Lilian date from 1934 and
1935. These are phantasmal, warmly bathed fantasies, curvaceous:
lush without cloying. Most are inspired by Lilian Harvey's
films eleven of which are alluded to. None of the individual
movements last more than five minutes and most less than
two. The First Set is almost ecstatically expressed - a
revelling in delight. The only nightmare discontinuity comes
with a lurch and a grating gear-change in the harshest of
discords in Pleurs. Its arrival is preceded by music
of melting beauty variously allocated between piano solo,
piano with flute and soprano with flute and piano. And yet
the final piece - just after Pleurs - returns to delight
and to the easy curve characteristic of Poulenc's most accessible
and irresistibly sentimental songs. It sounds as if it might
have escaped from operetta. The preceding pieces are frankly
heart-warming. Several use the soprano for vocalise, leaving
the impression of Bliss's Rhapsody and of comparable
pieces by Koechlin's young protégé, Darius Milhaud. What
an impression the film actress Lilian Harvey must have made
on this 67 year old composer to have drawn from him such
music! The second Lilian set runs to eight pieces - there
are nine in the first – and is not as sentimental as the
first.. Once again the various pieces deploy different permutations
of instruments. The second piece Habanera Creole gives
us a very impressionistic slant on a Cuban evening. Barcarolle
Monégasque is a lilting chiming seascape falling away
into the silence of distance. La Voyage Chimérique sounds
a wild note - the song of satyrs and Pan worship. This conveys
a world as strange and distant as Holst's Humbert Wolfe song Betelgeuse.
Yet more otherworldly is the Sicilenne de Rêve for
harpsichord and onde martenot - the latter an instrument
also much favoured by Jolivet. The ethereal ondes contrasts
with gentle asides from the harpsichord. Les jeu de Clown is
a miniature for grotesques with a touch of the dissonance
encountered in Pleurs. Le Prière de l'Homme is
reverential, slow stepping, concordant, a barely moving cortège
through some hallowed sacred place.
Vers
le soleil is
a suite for Ondes Martenot solo. The banal and ululating
potential of the instrument is kept under control with
an intriguing armoury of crooning nostalgia and ethereal
piping. This seven movement suite was written in 1939
on the sea voyage back from Morocco to France. It only
suffers from irritating gurgling - in the manic manner
of the score for Forbidden Planet - in the unnamed
piece (tr. 22). From Les Sirènes with its eerie
crooning to John Foulds' almost contemporaneous Lyra
Celtica (vocalising soprano and orchestra) is but
a very short step. The Final piece bids the listener
a fond and brief farewell with more supernal piping.
CD3 closes
with the subdued lamenting of Stèle funéraire for
three flutes à tour de rôle. This is an elegy for
Koechlin's friend, Paul Dommel. It was written in the last
year of the composer's life. The ever-sensitive flautist
Philippe Racine in succession plays alto flute in G, piccolo,
bass flute and back to alto flute. It is for most of its
duration profoundly subdued.
The notes
to this set are by Michel Fleury and Philippe Racine – yes,
the flautist. Each emphasises the role that beauty and dreams
play in this music as well as providing us with the usual
factual context.
The booklet
provides the sung text of the welcome and farewell songs
from the first set of L'Album de Lilian.
Koechlin
is gradually emerging into the sunlight and his subtle, sensitive
and masterly music can well stand the exposure. This three
disc set at Accord’s economic price – distributed by Discovery
in the UK - merits the attention of all Koechlin fans who
missed the CDs when issued individually. It will also please
those coming to the composer for the first time.
Rob Barnett
BUY NOW
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Christophe
Keller (piano) 
