Lebrecht Weekly – Nadia Boulanger: Works (Delos/SWR Music)

0

In half a century of listening to records, I cannot recall ever hearing music by the noted French pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. Revered by a stream of American (Copland, Harris, Carter, Glass) and British (Berkeley, Musgrave, Maw) pupils, the formidable Mademoiselle deferred to the music of her short-lived sister Lily and barely spoke of herself as a composer. Two releases, newly landed, may help to adjust that misperception.

DE3496cover

On Delos, an outpouring of early songs betray an uncritical adoration of Debussy, with touches of Saint-Saëns, Franck and a hint of the Russians. Nicole Cabell, Alek Shrader and Edwin Crossley-Mercer make the most of these morsels without ever convincing my ear of any trace of originality. Sundry works for piano, cello and organ are similarly à la mode, possibly intended as practice pieces for advanced students.

The surprise arrives in the thick of a German radio compilation of French piano concertos (volume 2), played by the restlessly inquisitive Florian Uhlig. Opening with a rather murky reading of Ravel’s left-hand concerto, Uhlig proceeds to numb the senses with an altogether vacuous Ballade by Germaine Tailleferre, the female associate of the quasi-rebellious Les Six. Then comes Nadia Boulanger’s Fantasie (variée) for piano and orchestra.

71Qu+cwCdnL._SL1200_

What can I say? It’s fun, fun, fun – quirky in the manner of Dohnanyi’s Nursery-rhyme Variations, or Rachmaninov’s concerto take on “Three Blind Mice,” while never taking itself half as seriously. Written in six movements and lasting just under twenty minutes, you never know what Mademoiselle is going to come up with next. There is a certain amount of swashbuckling – this is 1912, long before Hollywood required film scores – and an obligatory Berliozian reference to the Russian Dies Irae, but the impression you get is of a hyperactive young woman, 24 years old, throwing everything in her kitchen, including the sink, into this pot-pourri of a score. The following year her sister Lily won the vaunted Prix de Rome, crushing Nadia’s creative aspirations. This concerto needs to be heard in concert, and soon.

—Norman Lebrecht

Sign on to the blogfeed: www.slippedisc.com
Visit the website: www.normanlebrecht.com

60%
60%
  • Mademoiselle: Première audience — Unknown Music of Nadia Boulanger
    2
  • Ravel, Taileferre, Francaix: French Piano Concertos Vol. 2
    4
  • User Ratings (0 Votes)
    0
Share:

About Author

Norman Lebrecht is a prolific writer on music and cultural affairs. His blog, Slipped Disc, is one of the most popular sites for cultural news. He presents The Lebrecht Interview on BBC Radio 3 and is a contributor to several publications, including the Wall Street Journal and The Standpoint. Visit every Friday for his weekly CD review // Norman Lebrecht est un rédacteur prolifique couvrant les événements musicaux et Slipped Disc, est un des plus populaires sites de nouvelles culturelles. Il anime The Lebrecht Interview sur la BBC Radio 3 et collabore à plusieurs publications, dont The Wall Street Journal et The Standpoint. Vous pouvez lire ses critiques de disques chaque vendredi.

Leave A Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.