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Dukas - Works for Piano

£15.42

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Label: Mirare

Cat No: MIR242

Barcode: 3760127222422

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Instrumental

Release Date: 29th June 2015

Works

Dukas, Paul

La Plainte, au loin, du faune
Piano Sonata in E flat minor
Prelude elegiaque sur le nom de Haydn
Variations, Interlude et Finale sur un theme de Rameau

Artists

Herve Billaut (piano)

Works

Dukas, Paul

La Plainte, au loin, du faune
Piano Sonata in E flat minor
Prelude elegiaque sur le nom de Haydn
Variations, Interlude et Finale sur un theme de Rameau

Artists

Herve Billaut (piano)

About

For Paul Dukas' 150th anniversary, Herve Billaut's new CD focusses on his piano music.

Out of the 14 works composed by Paul Dukas (only 14!), 6 were written for the piano. The two most substantial works are the Sonata of 1899-1900, and 'Variations, interlude et finale sur un thème de Rameau', which are masterpieces.

Billaut completes his recording with the 'Prélude élégiaque sur le nom de Haydn': a moment of meditation. Worth seeking out if your only encounter with this great composer has been the 'Sorcerer's Apprentice' - and worth seeking out anyway!

Sound/Video

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Dukas - La plainte, au loin, du faune...
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Dukas - Piano Sonata in E flat minor: I. Moderement vite
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Dukas - Piano Sonata in E flat minor: II. Calme, un peu lent, tres soutenu
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Dukas - Piano Sonata in E flat minor: IV. Vivement, avec legerete
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Dukas - Piano Sonata in E flat minor: V. Tres lent, anime
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Dukas - Variations, Interlude et Finale sur un theme de Rameau: Menuet et Variations de I a XI
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Dukas - Variations, Interlude et Finale sur un theme de Rameau: Interlude
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Dukas - Variations, Interlude et Finale sur un theme de Rameau: Finale
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Dukas - Prelude elegiaque sur le nom de Haydn

Europadisc Review

150 years since Paul Dukas's birth, and 80 since his death, his music has only relatively recently begun to emerge from the shadows of his most popular work, the perennially popular Sorcerer's Apprentice. Recordings of his only completed opera, Ariane et Barbe-bleue, and orchestral music including the Symphony in C and the ballet score La Péri, have steadily increased appreciation of this fiercely self-critical composer. Dukas's surviving output may be small, but his late-Romantic music – which stands on the cusp of Impressionism and early modernism – is fastidiously crafted in a unique combination of Germanic integrity and Gallic beauty.

This new release from the brilliant French pianist Hervé Billaut gathers together the most important of Dukas's solo piano works (only a couple of minor pieces are omitted), and the result is one of the most compelling accounts of this music committed to disc. Of the two larger scale works, the Sonata in E flat minor of 1901 is the longer and better known. Its imposing structure and tight motivic workings evoke (no doubt consciously) the model of Beethoven, not least in the hymn-like slow movement. But this is Beethoven as refracted through the soundworld of César Franck, with Liszt's B minor Sonata not too far in the background. Billaut combines musical rigour with an authoritative technique in a performance that both moves and dazzles, not least in the superbly daemonic third movement, a scherzo in all but name, with a darkly chromatic fugue as the trio.

The other main item here is the Variations, Interlude and Finale on a Theme by Rameau (1903), a work whose starting point reflects Dukas's career as critic and music editor. Rameau's Menuet is soon all but submerged in variations of increasing intricacy, but with Billaut at the keyboard there's never any hint of descent from virtuosity into empty show, for he shapes the music with unerring sensitivity. The penultimate, filigree-laden Interlude section is beautifully judged, while the good-humoured Finale positively fizzes along.

The Prélude élégiaque (1910) was Dukas's contribution to a series of pieces commissioned to mark the centenary of Haydn's death. Dukas's theme is based on the letters of Haydn's name, but the harmonies and textures instead reflect the influence of his friend and colleague Debussy, which here prompt Billaut to a performance of glowing poetry. Even more steeped in the Impressionist soundworld is the piece that opens the disc: La plainte, au loin, du faune… (1920), composed as a posthumous tribute to Debussy, whose bell-like tolling develops into a deeply-felt lament which guilelessly weaves in the theme of the Prélude à l'aprés-midi d'un faune. It's given a wonderfully poised performance here, a perfectly-judged counterweight to the grandeur of the Sonata.

With a sumptuous but splendidly focused recording made in the Château de Rochebonne (in Billaut's native Rhône region), this is a marvellous disc for anyone wanting to explore the music of a still underrated composer, and surely a new first-choice for these works.