This page is also available in / Cette page est également disponible en:
Francais (French)
-
5
Nuages
Duo Cavatine: Noémie Raymond-Friset, cello; Michel-Alexandre Broekaert, piano
KNS Classical, 2023
Like a rolling cloud, the 2019 recording for Nuages drifted for years along the ever-changing winds of the pandemic. Now, its thunderous sound is here to shock listeners.
The album’s 2023 release makes it Duo Cavatine’s second published album, after 2022’s CellOpéra. But the choice of compositions still reflects its earlier recording date—it feels like the musicians are establishing themselves as a duo for the first time.
Francis Poulenc’s Sonata for Cello and Piano, Fp. 143 features a call-and-response motif and a tense, fragmented tune that both urges the musicians to chase after one another melodically and tonally. In the same stroke, it highlights both their great compatibility and their individual instrumental talents. This is followed up with David Jaeger’s Constable’s Clouds, in which the lack of piano accompaniment creates a feeling of longing. The listener yearns for the duo to perform together. The piano’s soft and mysterious, yet brief reappearance in the first part of Alfred Schnittke’s Sonata for Cello and Piano No. 1 further emphasizes this absence, making its explosive return later in the work especially satisfying.
Nuages beautifully connects the cyclical nature of the clouds to Duo Cavatine’s history with musical production, modified forever by the pandemic. It’s a fascinating juxtaposition between continuation and new beginnings.
This page is also available in / Cette page est également disponible en:
Francais (French)
