JEAN CRAS (1879-1932)
Suite en Duo (1927) 14.10
Four Pieces (1926-9) 18.50
Poemes Intimes for piano solo (1902-11)
28.15
Marie-Annick Nicolas
(violin)/Jean-Pierre Ferey (piano)
rec 1993
SKARBO SK4941
[61.15]
Amazon
US
I have already reviewed the Timpani Cras series and am pleased to supplement
those reviews with these of two excellent discs from SKARBO. I refer you
to those
reviews for biographical details.
Cras wrote the suite initially for harp and flute but also arranged it in
the form played here. It adopts a style, clean and clear, singable and free.
There is no dissonance. Dance and folksong are recalled rather like the Prelude,
Chanson et Marine of Guy-Ropartz. The music has an unpretentious simplicity
and a sense of falling into place.
The Four Pieces are also for violin and piano. The first movement - an air
with variations - is school-ish but in the succeeding breathing and rocking
Habanera any trace of the academy disappears. Evocation looks out on exotic
landscapes with the violin half catching recollections of Vaughan Williams'
Lark and for the rest taking oriental flute filigree as its inspiration.
The Eclogue is grave and steady, folksy but dignified.
The five Intimate Poems are for solo piano and are much earlier than the
other two pieces. En Islande is an example of what I will call Beethovenian
impressionism. The Preludio is a gracious and modest bird-call almost Handelian
at times. With the Stream depicts a rapidly flowing crystalline rivulet.
Meditation is all you might expect from the title alternating an hypnotic
ostinato with a rippling figure part Handel and part Medtner. John Foulds
piano music (available on Altarus) from the 1900s might well provide you
with a good comparison.
Another gifted Breton to add to the list.
Rob Barnett
If in difficulty you can order SKARBO releases from www.netbeat.com/skarbo
**********************
JEAN CRAS
(1879-1932)
Paysages (1917) 12.55
Danze (1917) 34.26
Two Impromptus (1925)
10.12
Jean-Pierre Ferey (piano)
rec 22 Dec 1997,
d'Aulnay-sous-Bois.
SKARBO SK1986
[57.39]
Amazon
US
Ferey (who also wrote the notes: French and English) continues his fine work
for Cras. He is alive to nuance, inclined to brilliance, when it is called
for, and open to grandeur as in the second of the two masterly Paysages.
In the first he brings out the wave-pattern and swell of the sea in which,
as a naval officer, Cras made his living.
The Four Dances: Morbida is as marked: fluid and languid and extremely personal
in a way never fully achieved in the Intimate Poems. It too ascends to the
heights of grandeur at 4.23. Scherzosa is marked pleasant and lively and
it is all of this: scintillating, cascading and in the secure hands of a
virtuoso. Tenera (tender and loving) is presented with faltering but confident
sensitivity. The Impromptus are pleasantly relaxed without being anything
more.
Recording quality and notes excellent.
Rob Barnett
A definite 'must' for collectors of French (specifically Breton) piano music.
Less of an imperative for the general collector
If in difficulty you can order SKARBO releases from www.netbeat.com/skarbo
Crotchet
