Various Composers - L'Album des Six (Corinna Simon)

Information

• Georges Auric - Prélude
• Louis Durey - Romance sans paroles
• Arthur Honegger - Sarabande
• Darius Milhaud - Mazurka
• Francis Poulenc - Valse
• Germaine Tailleferre - Pastorale
• Arthur Honegger - Sept piéces brèves, H. 25
• Darius Milhaud - Le Printemps, Book I, Op. 25
• Francis Poulenc - Improvisation in A minor à Georges Auric, FP 63/5
• Francis Poulenc - Mélancolie, FP 105
• Francis Poulenc - Novelette No. 3 in E minor, FP 173
• Georges Auric - Trois pastorales à Darius Milhaud
• Germaine Tailleferre - Impromptu
• Germaine Tailleferre - Partita
• Germaine Tailleferre - Rêverie
• Germaine Tailleferre - Romance pour piano

Corinna Simon, piano

Date: 2019

Label: RCA

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Review

“Les Six”, the group of young composers working in Paris from the early 1920s is the center of this album, with their first collaborative effort giving it its name.

“L’Album des Six” contains one short piece from each of this group of composers – Auric, Durey, Honegger, Poulenc, Tailleferre and Milhaud – resulting in an interesting combination of styles, compositional technique and pianistic writing, all of which fully embraced by pianist Corinna Simon.

This opening suite is followed by additional groups or singular short pieces by the members of “Les Six”, with highlights including Francis Poulenc’s Mélancolie and Third Novelette, played with heart-warming affection.

Simon’s handling of this French repertoire is impressive in its subtlety; Even when percussive elements are called for, as in some of Honegger’s “Sept Pièces Brèves” or Georges Auric’s “Trois Pastorales À Darius Milhaud”, the basic tone of her piano is never aggressive, maintaining lovely roundness. Her pedal work is superb too, as in Germaine Tailleferre’s six works which close the album. Tailleferre’s Impromptu and Romance are true revelations, still hinting at Faure and early Debussy but also highly original.

A nicely planned, fascinating program, with a superb performance to match. The recording, made at Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin is at Sony’s best technical standards, making this a highly desirable release.

-- Tal Agam

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Les Six is a name given to a group of six composers, including Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger, Georges Auric, Louis Durey and Germaine Tailleferre. The French critic Henri Collet originated the label Les Six in his article “The Russian Five, the French Six, and M. Erik Satie” (Comoedia, January 1920). The group's music music is often seen as a neoclassic reaction against both the musical style of Richard Wagner and the Impressionist music of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Les Six performed together in a number of concerts, and they collaborated on the play-ballet Les Mariés de la tour Eiffel.

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Corinna Simon was born in Berlin. She studied piano under Ingeborg Wunder at the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin and after that under Ludwig Hoffmann at the Musikhochschule München. Since her debut as a soloist at the Berlin Philharmonie in 1984, she has had a successful career as a pianist in solo works and chamber music. Various engagements have lead her to the major music metropoles of Europe, like Vienna, Paris, Stockholm, Oslo, Brussels, and to the 'Lucerne Festival'. She has also performed in the USA and Asia, among them in Moskau, Washington, New York and San Francisco, Jakarta and Brunei.

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