Paris 1913: L'Offrande lyique

Paris 1913: L'Offrande lyique

NI 6455 (RTF Classical / Nimbus Alliance, CD)

DDD
FIRST RELEASE (7 February 2025)
Tracks: 25
℗ 2025 Wyastone Estate Ltd
© 2025 Wyastone Estate Ltd
Main country of recording: United Kingdom
Country of manufacture: United Kingdom
Received: 16 December 2024
This item is available to review

Claire Booth, soprano
Andrew Matthews-Owen, piano

'The world première recording of Louis Durey's L'Offrande lyrique Op 4, six songs set to texts by Rabindranath Tagore (recipient of the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature) in French translation by André Gide, is a highlight of this collection. Inspired by the atonality of Arnold Schoenberg's The Book of Hanging Gardens, and often credited as the first piece of free twelve-note technique in French music, L'Offrande lyrique navigates a harmonic language which can hold clarity and vivid colour in Lumière ! ma lumière !, or blur into dark heavy clouded gesture in Les nuages s'entassent, effectively supporting Tagore's language. At times, the words seem to muse over seemingly unconnected piano motifs, before meeting - sometimes harmonically, sometimes not - sometimes walking the same path, other times meandering separately again. For Paris 1913 to include a world première recording of such important music, written over a century ago, is thrilling, and places Durey firmly alongside his contemporaries in the cafés and salons of pre-war Paris. Far from being overshadowed by the better-known composers in this anthology, these songs stand as a testament to the strength of French melodies of the era.' - © Andrew Matthews-Owen and Claire Booth

Recorded in March 2022 and September 2023 at Wyastone Concert Hall, Herefordshire, UK.

 

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