Grand Piano's claim that Florent Schmitt "stands alongside
Debussy and Ravel as one of the most original and influential French
composers of his time" is no exaggeration, and until his death
this was reflected by wide-reaching public recognition. Since then,
however, his star has inexplicably waned, in spite of the availability
of a growing number of recordings.
This disc is the first of four volumes and many premiere recordings
of Schmitt's genial music for piano duo and duet, which the accompanying
booklet notes reckon may be second only to Schubert's in quantitative
terms. Volume 2 has recently been released (GP622), with a third due
out in April 2013 (GP623). The fourth and final volume is likely to
appear later in theyear. In what is, for the 21st century, a rare act
of respect for a dead composer's wishes, there is one of Schmitt's
duets, the early
Marche Spectrale (1893), that the US-based
Invencia Piano Duo will not be recording, as Schmitt did not want it
published.
This is also Invencia's debut for Grand Piano. Invencia are Azerbaijan-born
Andrey Kasparov, also a composer, and professor of composition and piano
at Old Dominion University in Norfolk; and Ukrainian Oksana Lutsyshyn,
who also teaches piano and music theory at ODU. They play together with
impeccable timing and elegance, not to mention considerable virtuosity,
as this recital demonstrates.
Unlike the other two works, the opening
Three Rhapsodies have
been recorded before - perhaps half a dozen times indeed. Their audience-friendliness
is a factor of their cosmopolitan nature: a playful
Française,
an urbane
Polonaise - far from 'melancholic',
as the notes claim - and a waltzy
Viennoise. A further French
one of similar length is a standalone work - the
Rhapsodie Parisienne.
Naxos's in-house reviewer makes the reasonable point that it
has "that slightly neurotic quality of Ravel's
La Valse",
without realising however that the idea that Schmitt did not publish
it because "probably on reflection he thought [it] too close to
that work for comfort", completely ignores the fact that Schmitt's
work pre-dates Ravel's by almost twenty years. One of the latter's
most popular works owes in fact a huge debt to the
Rhapsodie Parisienne
- and indeed to the
Viennoise movement of the
Three Rhapsodies
- yet such are the vagaries of history that Schmitt is all but unknown
whilst Ravel is lionised. The
Seven Pieces, which the back
inlay and inside track-listing mistakenly show to have a running time
of 32:20, are a dreamy Fauréan delight for jaded ears, the musical equivalent
of summer zephyr under azure sky. It all but beggars belief that this
is the premiere recording of such an instantly winning work.
Audio is very good. The English-German-French booklet notes consist
of a general biography by Jerry Rife and specific commentaries on the
music by Kasparov himself. The only minor criticism that can be levelled
at this disc is the short running-time, although in fairness to Grand
Piano the still-to-be-publicised final volume would have to come in
well under the hour mark for the four CDs to squeeze onto three.
A perfect companion to these Grand Piano discs, incidentally, would
be Naxos's own recent - presumably first - volume of Schmitt's
solo piano music, confidently played by the young French pianist Vincent
Larderet, and including one of Schmitt's many masterpieces, the
pre-
Rite-of-Spring ballet
Tragédie de Salomé, in Schmitt's
own dramatic condensation of the original orchestral score (
8.572194).
Byzantion
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