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LCO LCO London Chamber Orchestra Ravel Fauré Poulenc Ibert Live Conductor Soloist Christopher Warren-Green Pascal Rogé Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) memory of a friend lost in battle. The suite LCO Live Le Tombeau de Couperin was first performed in April 1919, and three Ravel Fauré Poulenc Ibert I Prélude: Vif months later he re-composed four of the six II Forlane: Allegretto movements for chamber orchestra. Maurice Ravel III Menuet: Allegro moderato It was never Ravel’s way, though, to wear Le Tombeau de Couperin [17.20] IV Rigaudon: Assez vif the scars of grief and depression on the sleeve 1. Prélude: Vif [3.28] of his music. Instead they are sublimated 2. Forlane: Allegretto [6.04] Composers do not, in general, make good within antique forms: the Baroque dance 3. Menuet: Allegro moderato [4.34] soldiers. The practice and theory of one seems suite, and the idea of a musical Tombeau, 4. Rigaudon: Assez vif [3.14] inimical to the other: something to do, perhaps, or memorial, with which French composers Gabriel Fauré with obeying orders and submitting to the yoke had remembered their friends, teachers and 5. Pavane Op.50 [6.20] of teamwork rather than the draw of solitary heroes for four centuries and more. Ravel Francis Poulenc invention and endeavour; also and more did not presume to trespass on the music of Piano Concerto [19.39] debatably to the heightened sensitivity of the François Couperin (1688-1733), but chose 6. Allegretto [10.17] artistic temperament that renders it unsuited instead to honour the spirit, the clarity and 7. Andante con moto [5.20] to the gore and horror of the battlefield. It’s the grace of his work in a personal tribute, 8. Rondeau à la française [4.02] an anomaly of history that, for half a century inevitably coloured by nationalist sentiment, Pascal Rogé piano (roughly 1895-1945), pushed composers and of surpassing gentleness and delicacy. This other sensitive souls into the arena of war, character and the exquisite avoidance of Maurice Ravel when technology had not matched the reach irony in its revival of old and formal dance Pavane pour une infante défunte [6.29] 9. of geopolitical conflict. The music composed rhythms, make the suite diametrically opposed Jacques Ibert with slaughter fresh in the mind’s eye and ear, to Ravel’s other ‘war’ work, the opulent and Divertissement [16.20] therefore, may also have anomalous qualities. savage parody of waltz form, La valse. Only at 10. Introduction [1.10] Ravel was exempted from conscription the unlikely yet powerful climax of the Minuet 11. Cortege [5.10] on health grounds, but he was desperate to are we directly confronted with the scale of 12. Nocturne [2.52] serve his country in the Great War. In March what is lost; whereas the bluesy sign-off, 13. Valse [3.09] 1916 – at the age of 40 – he chose to serve at equally unlikely and imaginative in its way, more 14. Parade [1.49] the Front as a truck and ambulance driver. In typically wears the suite’s overall demeanour of 15. Finale [2.10] September 1916 he became ill with dysentery a sad smile. and in January 1917 while he was recuperating Total time [66.09] in Paris his mother died suddenly. In November Christopher Warren-Green conductor that year he completed a suite for piano, and dedicated each of the six movements to the www.signumrecords.com www.lco.co.uk 3 Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) spans, or attracts others who find relief in Rachmaninov returns with the gentle Pavane Op.50 Piano Concerto music that doesn’t take itself too seriously. theme of the slow movement and its heartbeat I Allegretto The plaintive, singing subject of the first accompaniment, though the subsequent Forget (if you had remembered them) S Club 7 II Andante con moto movement is subject to various treatments, development naturally scorns any heady and World Cup ’98. Think instead of a high- III Rondeau à la française some of them more dignified than others, eruptions of emotion: when it came to Renaissance palazzo, the origin of the Pavane though the procession from song to march to Russian music, Poulenc (and his French as a courtly dance with four beats in the bar: In November 1948 Poulenc made his first tour keyboard lionism to voluptuous romanticism contemporaries) held the ‘objective’ coolness or of a private chamber in an Elizabethan of the USA with his confidant, the baritone may remind you of Rachmaninov’s Paganini of Stravinsky as a model of restraint. Instead, house, appointed with recorder and lutenist. Pierre Bernac. On it he played a commission, Rhapsody – and the theme itself is not unlike a quicker central section dispels the tension John Dowland, Thomas Morley and many the last of his sparkling keyboard concertos, one from the same composer’s Third Piano and gives an unlikely context to the soloist’s others wrote Pavanes for this mise-en-scène: for piano. He had in fact composed for solo Concerto. grandiose fulmination. The finale is perhaps Morley described the Pavane as ‘a kind of piano and orchestra 20 years before, with a As though Poulenc had tired of the theme, the most typical of Poulenc, with its major- staid music, ordained for grave dancing’. ballet, Aubade, that epitomises the irreverent, however, the orchestra skitters away with a minor scamper, its Mozartian good humour So it is in Fauré’s ‘translation’ of the obstreperous, to-hell-with-it spirit of 1920s neoclassical Minuet, itself succeeded before in instrumental conversation and diffident dance to late-19th-century Paris. The flute, Paris. The concerto often revisits that music too long by another romantic melody, horns to send-off. modern cousin to the recorder, sings the and those times, sometimes coloured with a the fore. At the centre of the movement is an doleful main theme; you can even hear the rosy, Russian romanticism that is then all the aspiring sigh on the strings, a tiny prequel to archaic lute in the gentle, plucked bass of the more rudely banished by the many deliberate his greatest work, the opera Dialogues of the accompaniment. After the theme has passed discontinuities. It was around this time that a Carmelites. It ushers in a slow section, serene from the winds to the strings, there is a short friend coined the phrase that Poulenc never and contemplative, even liturgical with its middle section, more impassioned but still in quite lived down, ‘half monk, half thug’. block chords. When Poulenc is in this mood, the modal, detached style of the whole, before Neither was true of his sociable personality, however, nothing can last for long, and the wild the theme returns. but his music tends to the extremes that he parade continues. was otherwise reluctant to discuss. His next The second-movement Andante begins work, for example, was the Stabat Mater, and with the rhythm of a heartbeat. The finale is in describing the startling leap of style from in the popular Nogent-style which Poulenc one to the other to a friend, he wrote that ‘I am had made his own 30 years previously. The as sincere in my faith, without any messianic piano collaborates with the orchestra, rather screamings, as I am in my Parisian sexuality… than playing an adversarial role as the organ My musical tone is spontaneous, and in any does in its concerto. Le Figaro probably got it case, I think truly personal.’ As with the music right: ‘Certainly it isn’t a concerto at all but a of Ibert, so Poulenc at his most capricious little picture of manners, done up by a minor either repels those allergic to its short attention master.’ 4 5 Maurice Ravel original work is always refined and tinted. The is only too appropriate. But the following Pavane pour une infante défunte famous melody would be perfectly at home on Nocturne is entirely French in character – the flute, most French of instrumental voices, you can almost see Belmondo and rings of The violinist Pablo de Sarasate encouraged but it gains additional distance and poignancy cigarette smoke through the light string haze. one creative strain of enthusiasm for Spanish on a pair of muted horns. The wedding party returns to dance a culture among French composers, that paid waltz. When the most famous of them all homage to popular or folk tradition. Born appears, who knows whether it’s in nose- in the Basque country, Ravel was ideally Jacques Ibert (1890-1962) thumbing parody or affectionate homage? placed to make his own contribution to what Divertissement Erik Satie wrote a ballet, Parade, and this was becoming an increasingly fertile cross- I Introduction movement shares its riotous surrealism. pollination of Romance cultures. L’Heure II Cortege The bizarre juxtapositions of key reach a Espagnole (1907–9), that most perfect of III Nocturne climax with the opening crashes of the finale. comic operas, is one hilarious entanglement IV Valse A policeman blows his whistle in a vain attempt of sensuality and manners; the instrumental V Parade to halt the carnage. Not a note is wasted. Even Rapsodie Espagnole (1907–8) brings darker VI Finale if you could hardly tell that Ibert loved Wagner, harmonies to the opera’s swing and sexiness, or followed the radical journey of Boulez and and in turn this affecting little Pavane ‘for a You need only glance at the orchestra to friends with interest, the Divertissement would dead Infanta’, or child princess, shares some see that the Divertissement began life in be less diverting if it lacked such polymathic of the Rapsodie’s wistfulness, but in the the theatre pit, as incidental music.