Ropartz has begun to loom larger in the catalogue of late and Timpani’s
disc, noted as volume one in its complete recording of his sonatas,
shows how a thoughtful programmatic eye can be cast on his chamber
music. The earliest of the three works in the disc is the Violin Sonata
No.2, completed in 1918 and suffused with reminiscences of Breton
music. It’s a large-scale sonata, lasting over half an hour
in this performance. Unusually, perhaps, given the date of composition,
it’s full of fulsome and lyrically verdant writing partly evocative
in that respect of Fauré. The more pensive material is well
subsumed into the fabric of the writing and leads directly and happily
in to that Breton folklore of which he was so practised an exponent.
The folk fiddling episodes are full of earthy delight before Ropartz
unleashes, in the long slow movement, a veiled melancholy strongly
reminiscent of another of those unavoidable lodestars for French composers,
namely Franck. Ropartz captures the irregularity of Breton melody
perfectly in this work, and alternates the carefree Fauré with
the lyric poet. The result is a work of vitality and excitement.
The following year came the Cello Sonata No.2, another three-movement
work with a disarming way with slow material. Superficially the indications
of lent in each movement, whether preceded by ‘très’
or followed by ‘et calme’ might indicate a work of too
great an intimacy and too slow in tempi. But actually Ropartz manages
to vary the slower music imaginatively, the sonata’s opening
having an affecting lyricism, the slow movement being a song without
words, its melancholy subtly voiced, and the finale’s slow section
is the introduction to the excitingly animated closing section of
the work. The Sonatine is the only non-string work here, composed
for flute and piano in 1931. Rightly, the notes call this a ‘luminous’
work. Dedicated to René Le Roy, this takes us beyond the string
sonatas’ Fauréan inheritance to a more abstract, quasi-improvisational
world, fluent, fluid, avian - its calm beauty not quite masking the
order that allows such seemingly effortless freedom to evolve.
All four performers put across these works with finesse and great
sympathy for the idiom. It’s a delight to listen to them, especially
in the well-judged recording venues. Michel Fleury is a Ropartz partisan
and makes high claims for these chamber works. I think listeners would
agree that these performances make a splendid case for them.
Jonathan Woolf
Previous review: Stephen
Greenbank
