I am indebted to the
ever-generous Jacques Kleyn for introducing
me to the Paray recording series by
Fr Eduard Perrone of Detroit's Assumption
Grotto Church.
Paray is well-known
in the circles of received ‘wisdom’
as a B-list conductor of French orchestral
music. That he was also a composer became
apparent with the Mercury recording
of his St Joan Mass a work which
was also on a Reference Recordings CD
in harness with Paray’s First Symphony:
two wonderfully successful exultant
works.
Fr Perrone's Grotto
series is not yet complete but he has
already covered the songs and piano
music as well as the two major choral-orchestral
works. Here is the chamber music.
The 1908 Violin
Sonata is one of those singingly
graceful works whose surface us stirred
by a Franckian turbulence of the spirit.
There’s also a Tchaikovskian sweetness
verging on the salon in the allegretto
amabile and a more thrawn ardour
in the Molto vivo which has its
roots in the Mendelssohn violin concerto,
early Fauré and perhaps mature
Schumann. This is young man's music;
Paray was 22 at the time. The work was
dedicated to the violinist Hélène
Jourdan-Morhange who was also the dedicatee
of the Ravel sonata. It's intriguing
that Henryk Szeryng often played the
Paray sonata. The work is played here
with no holds barred. Tanau and Perrone
are recorded in an acoustic which has
a lively resonance. Listen to the gorgeous
echo on the last snatched note.
The 1921 Cello Sonata
represents the composer at one of
the heights of his mastery, rejoicing
in release from the dark years of imprisonment
in Germany during the Great War. The
sonata was written for and dedicated
to Gerard Hekking (1879-1942). Hekking
and the composer premiered it on 29
January 1920 at the Salle Éerard.
The music instantly declares its maturity
beside the epigone debt of the Violin
Sonata - fresh as that is. Here the
three movement 27 minute work is very
broadly in the elegant camp of Fauré
and Chausson. The music is lovingly
laid out for the cello. While the work
lacks the urgent climactic glories of
the John Foulds Cello Sonata it shares
that work’s lyrical fretwork. It also
has its own lapping-breathing magic;
witness the end of the first movement.
The finale is alive with rhythmic vitality
and engaging dialogue as well as evincing
a real facility for writing great themes.
Listen to the bell-like carousel at
3.30 and the delicate lacework at 3:40.
After some Pierrot grotesquerie gestures
from the piano the sonata ends with
a triumphant victorious gesture.
The String Quartet
is a relatively late affair by comparison
with the other French quartets of that
era: Franck,1889, Debussy, 1893 and
Ravel, 1902-3. The quartet was written
in Paray’s mind during his German incarceration
at the Darmstadt camp. He wrote home
of his utter misery and indeed on his
return home he was depressed and physically
weakened suffering lung problems and
general debility. The quartet is dedicated
to Lucien Capet (1873-1928) and was
premiered at the Salle Gaveau on 18
May 1920 by an ad hoc quartet
that included his friend, the cellist
Hekking. In 1944 he rewrote and re-instrumented
the quartet as a Symphony for Strings
reviewed
at and recorded on Grotto
GP0006.
The quartet is in four
movements. It is in a comparatively
severe classical style when assessed
against works such as the ecstatic examples
by Bonnal and Ravel. It perhaps belongs
as a development of the late Beethoven
quartets and the string writing of Mendelssohn.
A more emotional world is plumbed in
the assez lent but we return
to a sturdy Viennese joviality in the
Vif and the final the Très
Rhythme.
None of these performances
are time-serving gap-fillers. Real passion
and tenderness has gone into these essential
revivals.
Stereo separation is
superb and the recording is full of
wonderfully engaging antiphonal effects
and spatially projected dialogue .
When Fr Perrone finishes
with Paray recordings I hope he will
have the means and the appetite to revive
the works of another French unknown
Witkowski.
Should you wish to
explore Paray's music his publisher
is Editions Jobert of Paris.
Wonderfully life-enhancing
chamber works by Paray here revived
by the dedication and inspiration of
Fr Perrone and his sympathetically inclined
partners. I am sure that the spirit
of Paray looks down in kindly thankfulness
on these recordings. Let us hope that
France will also recognise Fr. Perrone’s
dedication to one of its sons.
Rob Barnett
Marian Tanau (violin) (sonata) 
for
details
