A native of Poland and originally called Szymon, Simon Laks was one of
that band of creatives that turned Paris into the main centre for art and
music in the 1920s. He owed his technical grounding to a thorough training
at the Paris Conservatoire, becoming involved with the “Association des
Jeunes Musiciens Polonais” at the same time as Alexandre Tansman was the
leading light of Polish music in the French capital. Laks was forging a
respectable career at the outbreak of World War II, but as a Polish citizen
of Jewish descent was unable to escape or emigrate. He did, through an
“endless series of miracles”, escape death in Auschwitz as a musician and
finally director of the men’s orchestra. Laks’s music received recognition
and awards after the war but, scarred by his wartime experiences and lacking
the artistic networks he had built up in the 1920s and 30s, he suffered a
similar fate to others such as Korngold and became isolated from the noisy
avant-garde.
Most of these works are pre-World War II, and the
Trois pièces de
concert form a light and entertaining introduction to Laks’s work of
the 1930s. The booklet notes characterise his idiom as “simultaneously
Polish and French… [with] incisiveness, wit, irony, and a propensity for
playful virtuosity everywhere, but also great soulfulness in the slow
movements.” This of course in opposition to Germanic complexity and
profundity. The
Trois pièces encapsulate this playfulness, and the
lyrical nature of the second of the three,
Andante un poco grave,
indeed makes for something soulful rather than funereal.
The
Cello Sonata opens with a darker seriousness of purpose, but
that sense of virtuosity shines through in variations that side-track the
musical narrative with innocent-sounding distractions along the way. The
spirit of Ravel is at times apparent, the second movement having
unmistakable jazz elements in its bluesy chords and the lazily casual nature
of its melodies. Irregular but deeply swinging rhythms extend this jazzy
feel into the final
Presto, suggested in the booklet as a sort of
Dave Brubeck “avant la lettre”.
Dedicated to Szymanowski, the
Suite polonaise is based on Polish
songs, with folk-music qualities in the writing for the violin and a
distinctive clarity in the sweet-sour harmonies of the piano part. These
movements go far beyond mere arrangements, with plenty of exploratory
composing and gorgeous moments, delivering a level of confident
sophistication that sees a young composer at the top of his game. These
could so easily have been ‘salon’ entertainments, but with the general
‘neoclassical’ stylistic umbrella that covers much of this music these are
pieces that have something of the quality of Arthur Lourié’s Parisian phase
about them.
The
Ballade “Hommage à Chopin”, takes us into a different
post-war period, and sees Laks returning to his spiritual and physical
homeland. This is a piano solo with a tender and reflective heart in the
first half, the pianism of the whole owing something to Chopin without
becoming pastiche. The second part of the work is of that heroically bravura
nature with which we associate Chopin, but even though his spirit is
conjured powerfully the piece retains and defends its originality. This is
the kind of work you can play blind to friends and drive them up the wall,
knowing it’s not Chopin but unable to fix on a name who would be able to
produce such a fantastic tribute in music.
Recording and performances of these works, all but the
Cello
Sonata of which are world premieres, are all top class. The
Cello
Sonata has appeared on a Nimbus disc NI5862 from 2010 with cellist
Raphael Wallfisch and pianist John York, which is a good performance but
doesn’t have quite the clarity in the recording as the present disc. The EDA
label has further works by Laks including his opera
L’Hirondelle
inattendue on EDA35. This
hommage is a very fine release
indeed and I would recommend it to anyone intrigued by this neglected but
brilliant 20
th century figure, whose hybrid of Polish character
and “Ecole de Paris” élan shines yet further light on a fascinating period
of the last century.
Dominy Clements
