Naxos is building
quite a catalogue of ‘educational’ CDs, and its ‘Art and Music’
series covers everything from the Medieval to Picasso. Cynics
might see these compilations as yet another vehicle for Naxos
to recycle their back catalogue, but these CDs have informative,
well illustrated booklets which provide a springboard for discovery
and further exploration.
Looking at one or
two of the other issues, Naxos’s musical and artistic selections
are appropriate, if possibly a little conservative. The Picasso/Stravinsky
association is an obvious one, but one might hope the catalogue
will be extended with some more modern subjects, or as a logical
development even a new DVD series. With Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)
acknowledged as being at the avant-garde for his time, a few
of the selections on this disc might provide a more appropriate
musical backdrop to works acceptable to the Paris Academy. This
is, of course, one of the potential dilemmas for such a project.
While musical and artistic development can be traced and compared
through the years, the path of modernism in music seems often
to be playing catch-up with that of art. Cézanne’s art was ‘discovered’
relatively late in terms of his own lifetime, and his influence
on Picasso or Matisse point to music with a little more modernist
zip than Chabrier or Bizet. The CD label does however point
out that the series ‘presents the composers active during the
lives of the leading painters and sculptors’, so with that point
clear I suppose one shouldn’t grumble.
Hugh Griffiths’
essay on Cézanne’s life, times and musical contemporaries is
as detailed and as informative as one could wish for in a production
of this scale. Cézanne’s life is sketched out in a few hundred
words, pointing out his awkwardly difficult but doggedly focused
artistic personality and progress. There is a very useful chronology
which takes us through Cézanne’s life year by year, documenting
significant artistic or historical events at the time, but strangely
leaving out much of his own artistic output. The music of the
time is also set in context, and each composer or piece is,
if possible, given legitimacy by having some connection with
Cézanne’s art or evolution. We have the misunderstood and the
rejected (Berlioz, Fauré), the neurotic (Duparc), the individualist
loner (Satie), the landscape painter in music (Bizet), the art
collector musician (Chabrier), and the revolutionary visionary
(Debussy). The remaining names (Vierne, Boëllmann and Ravel)
are shoehorned in somewhat, but in fact this CD, in its own
terms, has a lively variety and attraction which goes well beyond
the ‘music for the millions’ concept.
The musical programme
has its own built-in historical associations, and as a result
the extracting of single movements from larger pieces works
reasonably well. There are of course differences in recording
perspective, but each of the performances is good enough in
its own right. Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune
and Nuages are recorded in an unfortunately over-resonant
swimming-pool acoustic which might work for a Disney movie,
but does the orchestration no favours. The last of these is
followed by Ravel’s Miroirs recorded as dry as a Scottish
oatcake, so there is sometimes a little extra work for the listener
in terms of acoustic acclimatisation.
In general, this
issue and the series as a whole is something I applaud wholeheartedly.
Having done my Art-History ‘A’ level - too many years ago to
mention - I can say that this is the kind of thing which broadens
ones academic perspectives and aids the memory when trying to
place an artist and his work into some kind of context. The
CD is a nice enough compilation for casual listening, if a trifle
uneven for the critical ear. Fans of art will learn much about
music, and fans of music will likewise find their eyes opened
to some great art, so well done Naxos - absinthe all round!
Dominy Clements
see also Review
by Christopher Howell
Ilona Prunyi (piano), Béla
Bánfalvi (violin), János Fejérvári (viola), Károly Botvay (cello)
