(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The French composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) had a fascination for the stranger, both in time, place and cultural practice. It appears, for example, in the ballet with mythical motifs from ancient Greece, Daphnis and Chloé, and in the Spanish-inspired works The Spanish hour og Boléro.
Folk influence
This exoticism was partly something of the age, which also applied to composers' attention to folk music. At Ravel, this is combined through the influence of George Enescu (1881-1955) and Gypsy music.
From ECM there is now a release that combines chamber music for these two.
Ravel's first violin sonata was completed in 1897, but was released posthumously. The music is characterized by a combination of modality and chromatics. Tzigane from 1924 is a collection of gypsy techniques, with a complex and dissonant rhythmic drive. This is a virtuoso piece whose playability the composer himself otherwise questioned.
Enescu, who grew up with the influence of gypsy music, produced little – he completed only 30 works over a period of almost 60 years. This was partly related to the fact that he was busy as a violinist and conductor. Children's impressions (1940), "Impressions from childhood", is an impressive work, in which he uses the violin in a mimetic way to bring out rural sounds of, among other things, water, birds and locusts. His third violin sonata (1926) is subtitled "in the popular Romanian character". Enescu's work on Romanian folk music is a parallel to Bela Bartók's with Hungarian.
Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos has what it takes to convey this music. He comes from a family with strong roots in folk music, and is heard in the treatment of this material. He does not try to force an art musical way into this music, but approaches it in an almost-folk idiom, which must be correct. He is closely and brilliantly followed by pianist Péter Nagy. Together they provide two sensitive and expressive interpretations of music that are far too small to be performed.
The East and the Past
Ravel and Debussy are often mentioned together as if they were to represent a common musical aesthetic. Both's music has an unmistakable French touch, but in many ways they were opposites: Ravel was a conservative neoclassicist who believed in imitation of previous models and sought clarity in the music. Claude Debussy (1862-1918), on the other hand, wanted to break with the aesthetics of earlier times and create a new music based on colors and emotions, and he sought the vague and diffuse.
On a new release from Deutsche Grammophon, we get orchestral and vocal works by the two, performed by the Cleveland Orchestra under Pierre Boulez.
I Scheherazade, "Three poems for voice and orchestra" with lyrics by Tristan Klingsor, we meet Ravel's fascination with the Far East. This is exoticism and aestheticism in pure bottling. Anne Sofie von Otter sings here sensitively and beautifully. Pavane pour une infante defunte (1899) is one of Ravel's most famous works. The same goes for The Tomb of Couperin, which is a tribute not so much to compatriot Francois Couperin as to French music in the 1700th century. Each movement is dedicated to a friend who was killed in World War I; the work thus becomes a double tribute. In addition, the CD contains Ancient minuet.
The CD contains three works by Debussy: Dancer for harp and string orchestra, The water jet (“The Fountain”) (1889) to text by Baudelaire and Three ballads by Francois Villon. The dances are sophisticated lounge music. The water jet is perhaps not Debussy's most inspired work, but it does not get much help here, although the soprano Alison Hagley's voice is beautiful – what is missing is commitment. It's better in the Villon songs, but she's not in the same division as von Otter.
Pierre Boulez and the Cleveland Orchestra are able to play both sharp and soft at the same time. As always with Boulez, there is no sentimentality to be traced; his approach is translucent and structural at the same time as it safeguards progress. It is also liberatingly free of major facts – rather, these interpretations are at times a little undercharacterized.
