Orchestre Symphonique De La Monnaie, Patrick Davin – Philippe Boesmans: Pinocchio (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 02:03:41 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Cypres
Nineteen musicians in the pit, three on stage; resolutely tonal music in a straight line of succession running from Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Martinů, Weill; French lyrics more declaimed than sung – by, happily, Francophone singer-actors led by Stéphane Degout, Vincent Le Texier, Yann Beuron and Chloé Briot: this is the framework that Philippe Boesmans chose for his latest opera Pinocchio, recorded live at La Monnaie in Brussels. The script is the work of Joël Pommerat, and it aims for an hour and fifteen of the quasi-melodrama based on the style which was in vogue in the 19th century in which to showcase the baffling musical richness of Collodi’s work: and with immense success, it must be said. Pommerat is not necessarily looking to write a purely lyricalPinocchio, but rather to develop an opera within an opera, using Brecht’s favoured method of defamiliarisation, a sort of play-within-a-play, where “real” events alternate with narrative description of what’s happening or about to happen. This is, without a shadow of a doubt, a major work for the contemporary scene, a worthy 21st-century successor to the Magic Flute and its fantasy world, immersive, and full of illusions, prisms and invitations to new readings: in short, a masterpiece. And it can hardly come as a surprise that the subject hasn’t drawn the attention of more composers since it first appeared in 1881, as only cinema and television have really taken it seriously (and Disneyesque animations, heaping on the sugar), with the exception of Jonathan Dove’s unique 2007 work, The Adventures of Pinocchio
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Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, Patrick Davin – Dupont: Complete Symphonic Works (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 57:56 minutes | 1014 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Fuga Libera
Greatly admired by his contemporaries, Gabriel Dupont (1878-1914) studied with Massenet, then became a disciple of Vierne and Widor; he is one of those composers whose too-brief career prevented them from taking their merited place in the history of music. Despite suffering a chronic bout of tuberculosis in 1901, Dupont managed to enter for the Prix de Rome, obtaining a ‘second prize’ (ahead of Maurice Ravel). This composer has been partly rediscovered over the past few years – mainly his piano works,songs, and some rare chamber works – yet his symphonic music remain salmost entirely unknown. The compositions on this disc are the very first recorded collection of his complete orchestral repertoire, and they mark the course of Dupont’s brief creative years, from the three-part symphonic sketch Jour d’Été (1900), to the poignant Le Chant de la Destinée (1908), and including the orchestrated piano pieces Les Heures dolentes. Dupont’s language is a passionate synthesis of late 19th century French traditions with his quest for a new identity, a new path: one that weaves around the tracks of his contemporaries, sometimes crossing the border into German musical territory…
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