Francis Poulenc; Charles Koechlin - Couleurs (Artur Pizarro; Thomas Rösner)

Information

Composer: Francis Poulenc; Charles Koechlin

• Poulenc - Sinfonietta, FP 141
• Poulenc - Piano Concerto in C-sharp minor, FP 146
• Koechlin - Vers la Voûte Étoilée, Op. 129
• Koechlin - Sur les Flots Lointains, Op. 130

Artur Pizarro, piano

Bamberg Symphony Orchestra

Thomas Rösner, conductor

Date: 2020

Label: Odradek

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Review

Thomas Rösner’s new recording with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra presents two works each by a pair of 20th-century French composers whose posthumous reputations continue to grow. The earliest of these are Charles Koechlin’s symphonic poems Towards the Vault of the Stars and On the Distant Waves. Both date from 1933, though neither was performed or published until decades after the composer’s death. Francis Poulenc is represented by two post war works: Sinfonietta, commissioned by the BBC and premiered by the Philharmonia Orchestra in October 1948, and the Piano Concerto, composed for the Boston Symphony and premiered there by Poulenc and Munch in 1950.

Artur Pizarro is the soloist in Poulenc’s Piano Concerto, a work that offers little in the sort of conventional virtuoso display that has made both the Organ Concerto and the Concerto for Two Pianos so enduringly popular. Pizarro seems delighted to meet the score on its own terms, turning in a performance of considerable sensitivity and subtlety. Together with Rösner and the Bambergers, he achieves a genuine expressive symbiosis punctuated with disarming earnestness in the opening Allegretto. The Andante’s ethereal delicacy is at once alluring and the perfect set up for the piquant, bumptious Rondeau à la française.

The Sinfonietta, Poulenc’s largest purely orchestral work, is the antithesis of the understated concerto. The wind and brass choirs have ample opportunity to strut their stuff and do so with distinction. The whole orchestra acquits itself magnificently in terms of speed, agility and beautifully blended ensemble. Rösner’s focus on the phrase is inerrant and the musicians respond with gorgeously contoured shapes that never miss their mark.

The qualities of ensemble that conjure Poulenc’s bright palette are equally successful in the more diffuse, shaded sonorities of Koechlin. Despite pleasurable immersion in these foggy textures, with Rösner as guide, we never lose our way. It’s a pleasure to hear the orchestra sounding so fine.

-- Patrick Rucker

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Francis Poulenc (7 January 1899 – 30 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. He was one of a group of young composers known collectively as Les Six. His compositions include songs, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music. Among the best-known are the ballet Les biches (1923), the Concert champêtre (1928), and the Organ Concerto (1938). In addition to his work as a composer, Poulenc was an accomplished pianist. He toured in Europe and America with the baritone Pierre Bernac and the soprano Denise Duval, and made a number of recordings.

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Charles Koechlin (27 November 1867 – 31 December 1950) was a French composer, teacher and musicologist. Among his teachers at the Paris Conservatoire were Jules Massenet, Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Ravel and Jean Roger-Ducasse. He was a political radical all his life and a passionate enthusiast for such diverse things as medieval music, The Jungle Book of Rudyard Kipling, Johann Sebastian Bach, film stars (especially Lilian Harvey and Ginger Rogers), traveling, stereoscopic photography and socialism. As a composer, Koechlin was enormously prolific, and was highly eclectic in inspiration and technique.

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Artur Pizarro (born 1968 in Lisbon) is an internationally-acclaimed Portuguese concert pianist. He studied with Sequeira Costa in Lisbon and at the University of Kansas. His other teachers include Aldo Ciccolini, Géry Moutier and Bruno Rigutto at the Conservatoire de Paris. Pizarro won first prize in several international piano competitions, and has performed internationally in solo recitals, in duos, with chamber music groups, and as a soloist with the world's leading orchestras. He has an extensive discography available on Linn Records, as well as on Naxos, Hyperion, Collins Classics, and other labels.

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Thomas Rösner (born 12 June 1973) is an Austrian conductor. Born in Mödling, he studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and attended master classes with Ilya Musin, Myung-whun Chung and Hans Graf. From 1995 to 2005, Rösner conducted the Sinfonietta Baden, which he founded. From 2005 to 2011, he was principal conductor of the Biel Solothurn Symphony Orchestra. Rösner is currently Artistic Director of the Beethoven Philharmonie in Vienna. His discography includes recordings with the Wiener Symphoniker, the Bamberg Symphony, and the Janáček Philharmonic, among others.

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